


To Be of Use

by Problematic_Wesker_Stans



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Abduction, Breeding, Cervical Penetration, Choking, Come Inflation, Crossdressing, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Forced Orgasm, Humiliation, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Interspecies Sex, Jealousy, Lactation, Master/Slave, Masturbation, Mental Instability, Mind Games, Non-Human Genitalia, Obsession, Paralysis, Physical Abuse, Rape Cage, Restraints, Rough Fingering, Rough Sex, Self-Harm and Mutilation, Situational Humiliation, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Unrequited Love, Voyeurism, Watersports, Whipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-16 01:30:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16075544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Problematic_Wesker_Stans/pseuds/Problematic_Wesker_Stans
Summary: A collection of the passions of Albert Wesker and Jill Valentine.---Mature/explicit content. Please read tags/warnings - subject to change with each chapter.





	1. Existence

_**Passion**  (Greek πασχω "to suffer, to be acted on" and Late Latin (chiefly Christian) passio "passion; suffering" (from Latin pati "to suffer")_

* * *

_**June 2009.** _

Chris Redfield stares at her through the bulletproof glass.

They tell him she has refused to eat. They threaded her nose with a feeding tube. Forced it down her throat and pumped liquid calories into her stomach until it was distended.

They tell him she has lost control of her bodily functions. They placed a catheter in her to prevent messes. To prevent sepsis. To make their lives easier.

She has a urinary tract infection now. They would not have known, if there hadn't been bright red blood in her urine. It is probably from the catheter they inserted to make their lives easier, they say.

They say that she doesn't speak. She doesn't respond to stimuli. She doesn't move.

Her brain activity indicates she is not in a coma. One doctor says, quite casually,  _It is almost as if she doesn't exist_. But it is curious; her body is still there, day after day. Her body takes up space. It breathes. It runs its various courses.

This is odd for a person  _who doesn't exist_ , they say.

Chris stares at her face. She doesn't even blink.

He asks the doctors and the scientists and the nurses and the surgeons and the neurologists what has happened to her, why why whywhy _why_ , because she was speaking in the helicopter, she was moving, she was alive, he saw her and he touched her and she smelled like sweat and dirt and sharp-sweet chemicals. She  _existed._

 _Did everyone die in Africa?_  he asks Claire Redfield, who has also come to see the unliving woman behind the bulletproof glass.

He tells his baby sister that he thinks constantly of killing himself, so he won't have to visit the Jill Valentine who doesn't exist.

* * *

_**January 2007.** _

_Your insides are full of me._

Her chains rattled against the against the stately headboard of Wesker's great bed with every thrust. Her fingers tightened around the metal links that held her in place for him.

He moaned in her ear and one of his hands came up to her throat, wrapping around her slender neck. He squeezed until she could feel her heartbeat in her face, until she was short of breath.

_I've got myself so deep in your poor slit._

Her eyelids fluttered closed at his lurid description. He always had such a way with words. And he was only ever so verbose with her. She tried to swallow past his grasp. She failed and nearly choked, sputtering, her lips suddenly wet with her own saliva.

_I need to be deeper._

He reached down between them, where her ass met his hips. He lifted her thigh higher, still thrusting, while his little finger parted her cheeks to touch her darker hole, and feel the way her pussy wept for him.

_Open up… open yourself up… You know I'll just take it if you don't… It hurts us both when I have to take it from you..._

She obeyed and pushed back against him, felt her sore walls contract weakly around him, massaging him. He thrust hard and held himself still for several seconds. She inhaled sharply -  _both_ of them did - a dizzying pain in her lower belly forcing her to arch her back. He was as deep as he could go. The cruel head of his cock battered up against the mouth of her uterus, bruising it.

_I need more. One day…I'll dilate your cervix… It will open for me like a wet little mouth… suck me off like a wet little mouth..._

The hand around her throat released her and drifted down, lower, until it tentatively, reverently caressed her glowing chest plate.

_I'll fuck your womb, Jill._

His hips resumed thrusting, with shorter strokes than before; he pushed so deeply into her, it felt as though he was rubbing her stomach from the inside. She mewled softly, pathetically. He was practicing, she knew. He was imagining his leaking glans trapped inside of her, the flare of his angry red corona catching on the ring of muscle he would have to force himself through.

_I'm going to flood your womb with come… You'll feel every drop of me in you. I'll open you up, again and again, until you give me a child._

The length of his body pressed to hers - his chest and thighs, slick with sweat, slid against her back, her thighs, her ass as his pace quickened. Their legs tangled together, ankle bones cracking against one another painfully, knees pushing knees wide apart. The short, shallow strokes of his thick cock jarred her, forced the air from her burning lungs. He fucked her like an animal - one purpose, one goal in mind. He abused her breasts - pawing and groping her soft flesh, twisting and pulling on her nipples until she cried out from the sting of it. Her skin, eerily translucent in the moonlight, pinched where the metal of her chest plate dug in as he had his way with her.

He found her throat again, this time with both hands, and choked her from behind. She gasped and gagged as he squeezed. Tighter.  _Tighter._ She struggled futilely in her chains, fighting to free herself from his brutal grip.

_You clench so hard around me when you're afraid. Harder… yes… yes._

His own breath seemed to stop as he neared his climax, caught and held. The handcuffs bit into her wrists as she clawed at his hands, tearing his knuckles, the blood smearing up his arms as she fought.

_Oh god, I'm so close. Suck me with your cunt…Suck me... That's it… I'm going to fill you up… I'm going to hurt you with my cock… That's it..._

Her vision began to fade black at the edges. Her head felt loose, airy, and the world blurred around her.

He buried his face between her shoulder blades and cried out his release, shivering violently. He shook her, throttled her by her throat, and as the room grew darker, she felt his teeth biting whatever flesh he could reach, sinking into her spine, the nape of her neck. His mouth was like fire lapping at her sweat-soaked skin. Inside of her, his cock throbbed and pulsed, a separate furious  _animal_. It was something autonomous, alive, pouring its viscous, milky poison deep into her cervix.

_Oh… I can feel my come… It's so warm inside of you… Your cunt is so greedy, so hungry… Drink it all… Take me… take my seed..._

His grip loosened, his hands finally falling away. She gasped for air, coughing and dry heaving, her fingers curling, her legs straightening as the numbness in her limbs receded.

He hunched his hips once more as a final thin stream of semen pumped against her womb. They both groaned at the dull, thrumming pain in her pussy. Seconds ticked by - ten, then thirty, then sixty - but she didn't dare try to free herself from his embrace. He remained inside of her, still painfully hard.

Breathing heavily, he pressed a kiss to the spot on the back of her neck where his sharp teeth had nearly broken the skin in his frenzy. She trembled and blinked, trying desperately to control her pounding heart, terrified that the slightest movement would arouse his volatile lust again.

Softly, he swept her hair away from her face and nuzzled her delicate ear. His hand trailed down her body, the tips of his fingers brushing over a hardened, sensitive nipple, and then her soft belly. Her exhausted muscles tightened once more under his careful ministrations. She squeezed her eyes shut.

He sighed, his breath flushing over her heated skin like the brush of a feather. His fingers drew small, lazy circles on her stomach and drifted lower still. She flinched at his every caress.

_There was once a girl…who was beloved by a god..._

He slipped his fingers between her legs and touched the base of his own cock, the rest of him still buried and twitching inside of her. He felt her sore hole gently, exploring her stretched and tender labia.

_She was willful...she was prideful...and she betrayed him._

His come mixed with her own lubrication and seeped out around his shaft. Slowly, he trailed some of syrupy discharge up, spreading it over her small, swollen clit. She held her breath, her chest grabbing.

_But he forgave her many transgressions…and when they met again in a castle by the sea, he saved her life..._

His other hand snaked down under her hip, around to her front. He pulled her puffy mons tight, retracting the hood of her clitoris, and he began to masturbate her vulnerable little pearl. Aided by his slippery-hot come, his fingertip barely stroked the tiny bundle of nerves before they both moaned piteously in the darkness.

_In return for this…the benevolent god made the girl his own._

Her body bowed against his. Excruciating pleasure shot through her; pleasure so sharp it became pain. He deliberately worked her swollen clit, focusing on the underside and very tip, knowing just what she needed. Her legs stiffened and twitched at each concentrated touch and her hips undulated, unable to stay still under his relentless attack. Her tired muscles gripped him, rippled along his length, still inexplicably hard. She writhed as his finger continued to torment her.

It was too much.

It was too much, she would break.

She would shatter into a million pieces.

_He loved her so that wanted to feel everything the she did… He wanted to feel her pleasure and her pain and the thousand other things she felt without him._

She cried out hoarsely, the sound of misery and anguish echoing around the room. "Please!" she begged. Mercilessly, he continued to stroke her clit. Unending, measured, so that she could not plateau, could not catch her breath, could not even close her poor shaking legs to defend herself.

_He loved her so that he wanted to crawl inside her and live there… And so he devised a way to become the girl…_

The scarab burned brightly in the darkness. Garnet light spilled across the sheets like a stain.

_They would be together for all of eternity… And if the god died… the girl would too._

He thrust his cock then, just once, and pushed her… pushed  _them_  over the edge.

She came - empty, delirious, with his sacred name in her mouth. And he came...  _as her_.

Both of them as close to death as they had ever been.

* * *

_**April 2008.** _

_Would you choose him, Jill? Over me?_

The lash of the whip made her body arch and flail, like a fish on the deck of a boat, tangled in thin netting. She gasped. She yanked wildly at the restraints that kept her poor, bloodless arms wrenched above her head.

She had seen a picture of  _him._

It had been an accident. She hadn't meant to look. She hadn't wanted to. But the laptop was open. The screen was bright, as he swiped through file after file of B.S.A.A. personnel. She'd tilted her face up when she heard him sigh, almost wearily.

And she saw it. A newer photo - one she hadn't seen before. The same dark brown hair, and deep hazel eyes, and square jaw, and solemn frown. His name was spelled out at the top of the screen, above a cluster of statistics.

Her heart had lurched at the sight. One stuttering beat. Barely a flutter.

But she'd felt him tense beside her. Heard the laptop slam shut.

It had been an accident.

_Would you choose him? After all I have done for you?_

Another whip crack split the silence of the musty air like thunder. She sagged, her bound wrists popping in resistance as they supported her full weight.

Her heart had skipped and he'd felt it… and now he would beat her half to death for her mistake.

_Answer me!_

"No, sir!" Her answer was a sob. It was high in her chest. She choked on the words.

He knelt down in front of her and stared up into her flushed face.  _No?_

She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out his glare. Her jaw clenched and she ground her teeth, grimacing in pain.

She felt the woven leather handle of the whip under her chin. Slowly, he lifted her face up to meet his. Her heart hammered in her chest. Lurching, unsteady.

_No? You wouldn't choose him? If you had the choice?_

She opened her eyes. A tear trailed down her cheek. She wiped it away furiously on her aching bicep. Her bottom lip quivered. "No, sir. I...I would never choose him over you. I wouldn't. I would never."

Perhaps…maybe…he would let her rest. If she answered him correctly. If she pleaded correctly. If she somehow, some way could fix what she'd done. He might leave her alone. He might…he might take pity on her, if only she could say the words that would make him happy...if she could find the right words, put them the right order…

She dangled in her bondage and he stared up at her suffering, unmoved.

_I seem to recall you choosing him before._

"Please, sir," she tried, her voice wavering with tears. "I swear. I never chose him. When he had me… he made me - it wasn't me..."

Wesker stood, crossing his arms over his chest. He watched her twitch, and shuffle, and struggle, her body so exhausted that it couldn't stay still, couldn't stay upright. The only thing keeping her from collapsing to the dirty floor, collapsing into a pile of sorry, weak flesh, was the pulley system.

_You're lying to me._

"No…no, sir! I swear!" The words tumbled out of her desperately, her body heaving with them. "Please!"

He turned and walked away from her, handing the whip off to the maijini in the shadows. It had waiting patiently for its turn - and maijini so loved to torture. Its face, raw and rotting, emerged from the darkness.

"Ten more for Miss Valentine. Make her sorry for lying."

"Sir!" She screamed then, her voice hoarse, breaking. "Please! Please!"

_One day you will thank me for teaching you honesty._

"No, please! I'll do anything!" she cried, and the words echoed around them, bouncing off the wet stone walls, kicking up the dust and dirt beneath her toes. She stumbled forward, chasing after him as best she could, until she reached the end of her shackles. The chains caught, and she was dragged back, her knees buckling as she tripped under the rig. Her erratic movements disturbed the single light bulb above them. It swung back and forth, illuminating him for split-second intervals, like the flickering of a silent film reel.

He looked at her blandly, as one might look at someone speaking a different language.

 _The time for begging has past, Jill. I have tried to show how wrong you were about him. But you're so very, very headstrong. It's almost as if you…_ cannot  _believe me. And reprimanding you this way hurts me too. Surely you can see that I don't want to do this. It wounds me, deeply._

Silence for a moment. The pulley creaking. Her own breath hitching and catching in her chest. And then:

_You know I have to punish us because I love you. I love you more than he ever could._

More tears fell, trailing down her cheeks. They stung a still-healing gash on her lip. She tasted pennies. "Please…" she tried once more.

_Shh… quiet now._

"Please… I love you too," she wept, hiccuping between the bitter words.

_We'll try again tomorrow. Perhaps you will love me enough then._

The whip cracked ten more times in the stillness. She didn't have the strength to make another sound.

But he did. She heard him cry out with every lash as blood dripped down her bare back.

* * *

_**March 2007.** _

The abstraction of being what she was - being a  _body slave_ \- was somehow enticing, when one imagined it. Exciting, and breathless, and intoxicating.

The reality, Jill knew, was nothing like that. It was an exercise in extreme patience. Very long periods of waiting. Very long periods of stoic sufferance.

She sighed and lifted her arm to relieve the cramp that had settled there. Her muscles protested, and the silver handcuff that kept her in her place - at his feet always - tinkled against the claw-footed chair leg.

She waited for him whether he was at home, in the office, or laboratory.

She waited… _to be of use._

The beautiful scarab on her chest glowed faintly, nestled between her generous, naked breasts. He was thinking of her. She could feel it when he did - heat and light pulsing through the wires and tubes that wound between her ribs, twisting their way around her heart and lungs. He had sewn himself into her very body. He had made sure that she would never  _not_ know him.

They were no longer separate beings. They existed  _with_ each other, and only with each other. A topiary tree with a split trunk, braided back together.

She pressed her cheek to the curved chair leg and closed her eyes.

She felt his fingers stroke the top of her head, gently curling her fine white hair. She could hear him type with his other hand. The toe of his boot tapped the hardwood floor - a mesmerizing, hypnotic tattoo that made her content and sleepy.

_Your bladder is full._

Roused by him, she pushed herself to sitting up straight. He was looking down at her, his head cocked to a slight angle.

He was fascinated by human processes. He didn't have them anymore - not many, at least - and so the simplest of functions became something of an obsession for him. He could  _feel_  these things through her, he told her. He could feel her bowels move and hot urine pass through her urethra. He could feel her nausea when she was ill. He could feel her migraines, which occurred once a month on the left side of her skull. He could feel her uterus contract and the slippery discharge of blood and mucus and painful little clots passing through her cervix. And he marveled at it all - every human sensation, pleasant and unpleasant.

_Let's go relieve ourselves._

She swallowed thickly. Her stomach dropped.

There were things she swore she would never get used to. Invasive, degrading things,  _humiliating_  things. But she did them. And, like all things with time, they began to feel routine.

This was one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We originally posted this story under a separate author name as we didn't think it would be good for our other piece, "Paradise Found", which is obviously for a very different audience. However, we continued to play with this and decided it deserved to sit alongside "Paradise Found", like two sides of the same coin. We really hope you enjoy this and that you're ready for something of a ride as Wesker descends further and further into his passion. Thanks for reading!


	2. Licker

_"... penchants, inclinations, desires and aversions carried to a certain degree of intensity, combined with an indistinct sensation of pleasure or pain, occasioned or accompanied by some irregular movement of the blood and animal spirits, are what we call passions."_

_-Denis Diderot_

* * *

_**September 21, 2007.** _

She couldn't move.

He hadn't kept her here long - her muscles weren't tight yet, weren't shuddering with strain - but her wrists ached against the metal clamped tight around them. Her neck was craned at an odd angle and she knew her back would protest soon.

For now though, she waited, trying to ignore the erratic, lurching heartbeat in her throat.

_Strip,_ he'd told her, when he first led her into the facility - an old warehouse with faded Tricell shipping containers, and stained concrete floors, and flickering fluorescent lights.

_Bend,_ he'd told her, when he'd positioned her before the metal frame - a strange thing that reminded her of a stockade, all black steel and shackles.

He had been silent as he locked her into place. Arms pinned before her. Head held tightly in place, barely able to turn and follow his movements. A kind of cradle that curved around her abdomen, cold metal keeping her torso arched in an unnatural bow, her hips tilted up.

A bar between her ankles, keeping her legs spread wide.

Keeping her on display.

She was a farm animal, for his pleasure.

But he wasn't admiring her, or even looking at her imprisoned body. He wasn't speaking to her, wasn't  _thinking_ to her. And that, somehow, made it all worse. The blank, grey  _uncertainty_ of whatever he had planned for her.

The air in the room was stale and damp, and distant noises echoed all around her - clanking pipes, rattling vents, humming, frayed electrical wires.

The alien sounds from the solitary Licker in its cage, just a few yards away.

Her breath had caught when she'd seen it. She'd crossed over the threshold of the door, and she'd paused, eyes darting from it, to Wesker, and back again in the dim lights.

_Pay him no mind._

But she could hear it now, pacing behind her. Back and forth, back and forth, claws clipping against the cement. It walked in a steady, looping rhythm, broken by the occasional hiss or chatter or rumbling purr.

She couldn't turn to look at it. Couldn't keep her eye on it. Didn't know if it had sensed her presence. Wouldn't know if it slipped from its cage. Wouldn't know if it had scented her, and was waiting for its opportunity to strike, to lunge towards her prone, chained body...

The thought tore through her mind:  _He was going to let it maul her._

Her eyes widened with the sudden realization. Her heart dropped, and her pulse spiked, and a thin sheen of sweat broke out across her skin.

_Jesus Christ,_ he was going to release it. He was going to let it rip her apart.

He was going to watch.

"Sir...what is...what is it doing?" She shouldn't have asked. She should never have asked, but the question stung her like a wasp, lodging itself deep into her muscle, and she had to pry it loose.

She couldn't see him. She heard him moving. Heard him stop. Heard the rustle of fabric as he turned towards her.

_I told you not to think about him._

"I just…" Her voice shook as she tried to find the right words, the right tone - that elusive, delicate, perfect balance of  _everything._ "I just want to know why…"

_You think he's here for you, Jill? Is that it? Is that what frightens you?_

She was silent. Wesker stepped forward, stopping down before her, reaching out to touch her chin. He tipped it up as far as it would go in the frame, and she met his eyes. He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek.

_He is._

His hand fell away. He walked back to the side of her, just out of sight.

And she was plunged into sudden panic - black and thick as oil. Cold and wet and coating her throat, filling her lungs.

"Please! Wesker, stop! Please!" Her voice cracked as it grew in pitch, as she begged, mortal terror taking over. She struggled against the shackles, metal banging and grinding against metal as she fought. He wouldn't do this. She couldn't let him do this. This couldn't really-

_Calm yourself. You know I won't allow any real harm to come to you._

He was searching for something in his leather attache case. Glass bottles clinked together. Buckles clicked and zippers hissed. Her chest heaved as she twisted in place.

_The fascinating thing about these creatures -_ a bag opened, and closed again, and she tried to turn her head, but the metal bar held her fast in place -  _is how uncomfortably close they remain to humans after transformation. Did you know they have forty-eight chromosomes?_

Her knees felt like they might give out beneath her.

_Humans, of course, have forty-six._ His footsteps approached from behind.

He reached around her, holding a small jar of ointment before her face.

_Go on. Smell._

She could barely breathe. She could barely think. But she took a hesitant sniff, immediately recoiling from the substance. It was sour. Rancid.

_Forty-eight. Forty-six._ He pulled the jar away.  _It makes one wonder about many things._

She was silent. Trembling. Tears stung the corners of her eyes.

And then she gasped, feeling his hand between her legs. He stroked her exposed labia - not in an attempt to elicit a response, but spreading the contents of the jar across the smooth skin. It was thick, and very cold.

_This is made from the discharge of a female in estrus._

Her breath hitched at his words, caught in her throat. A terrible pressure just above her sternum.

_It certainly wasn't easy. They're quite fierce...but I'm sure you know that._ He spread the slime across the crevices of her vulva. Around the nub of her clitoris. One fingertip circled her opening, dipping briefly inside, dragging the substance along the soft walls of her sex.

And then…he was gone. She listened as his footfalls trailed away.

She listened to the sound of grinding, rusted metal as he pulled the lock from the cage.

She listened to the hinges protesting as the gate opened.

"Hello," he said, firm and bright. "Come here…don't be afraid." His voice was saccharine sweet as he spoke to the monster. "Good boy…come along…right here."

The familiar  _click-clack_ of the Licker's talons on the concrete made her blood freeze in her veins.

"Don't do this…oh, God, please, Wesker…don't!" She yowled. She jerked against the unyielding steel, desperate to turn, to meet his eyes. If he could see her...if he could just  _see_  her, and see that she was sorry, see that she didn't mean to do... _whatever_ she had done...that she would make this better, that she would  _be_ better...if he would just look in her eyes...

She felt the Licker approach from behind. It seemed to radiate an eerie kind of heat, the way a fresh corpse might - warm and clammy all at once.

"No! No, no, no! Please!" Her screams turned to half-sobs, throaty and broken.

_He will be curious, of course. But he isn't here to hurt you._

Hot breath curled against her slit.

_Oh, Jill._ Wesker took a few steps forward, back into the line of her vision, leaving the monster to sniff and wheeze at the warm flesh between her legs.  _You're terrified…if you would only listen..._

She strained against the shackles, strained away from the creature pressing closer and closer to her. It seemed to be purring - humming lightly against her, not touching, not touching...but she heard its teeth gnashing, chattering, heard the slick, rattling sounds of its viscous throat with each inhale and exhale.

"Please," she whispered, looking up at him, his imposing figure distorted and wavering behind her tears.

The word fell flat in the air between them.

And then something touched her.

She gasped, bucking forward at the sensation. It was moist. Slimy. A wet organ, probing at the damp skin and sticky cream between her thighs.

_Don't be alarmed. He's going to taste you._

It seemed hesitant at first. It ran the tip of its tongue along her puffy mons, tracing the shape of her sex. Drifting across her entrance, barely brushing her clitoris. She bit her bottom lip, and closed her eyes, quivering against the stand.

_I imagine he's not quite sure what to make of your cunt._

She felt it press closer against her, its tongue growing bolder as it familiarized itself with her. She squirmed as it began to lap at the substance, as the tentative brushes and soft probing quickened.

_A familiar scent...an alluring one...but the anatomy isn't at all what he expects._

She couldn't contain the cry that burst forth when its tongue found her opening again, slithering inside, up into her most intimate place. It lingered there, the tip of the appendage stretching and spreading her as it curled and twisted against her tightened muscles.

_He explores the world through taste. It's a fascinating mechanism, truly. He will learn everything he needs to know about your body through his tongue alone._

She sobbed at his words, thrashing against the metal as the creature's tongue worked in and out, in and out, slipping from her hole to flick around her distended clit. It coated her cunt with thick, sticky drool. She felt it dripping down her thighs, heard it splattering to the ground below. Its jaws clattered noisily behind her, and it gargled with each thrust, swallowing its spittle, swallowing the secretions, swallowing  _her_ secretions, as she felt herself grow reluctantly wetter, and looser, under its ministrations.

_He will be able to reach so far inside of you...so much farther than I can…_

Her hips bucked away from its relentless mouth. Her knees shook as she tried to close her legs, fighting against the bar that kept her spread open, kept her locked tight against the burrowing tongue. She could feel it thrusting deeper and deeper, examining every inch of her, up to her womb, up to the tight ring of her cervix.

Her hands clenched and unclenched in the shackles, and the metal dug into her wrists as she pulled, pushed, anything to move away from the creature. Anything to get  _away_ from the awful heat of its mouth, the sickly-sweet smell of rotting flesh, the monstrous noises as it withdrew its slobbering tongue from her pussy...only to lick slowly, deliberately, along her silky bare mound.

Her clit throbbed with each lingering pass.

The sounds she made were humiliating. High and keening and  _horrible._ She was weeping, gasping,  _no no no_ on her lips, in her throat, as it continued its invasion.

_That tongue…amazing. Keep bearing down…keep fighting...yes..._

She glanced up at him through her tears.

He had undone his pants and his hand wormed inside the fly. She could see him stroking his length, his knuckles straining against the tight black material, the outline of his cock twitching as it pulsed to hardness.

_His saliva is full of histamine._

She grunted, a sorrowful guttural sound, as the monster's tongue continued the slow, cruel penetration of her defenseless slit. Her thighs trembled as she tried desperately to close her legs, to stop the intrusion… but the spreader bar at her ankles was still entirely unyielding.

_Your ripe little slit is going to swell up like you've been stung by a thousand nettles. Your watery secretions are going to thicken to the consistency of molasses. Your cervix will dilate, ever so slightly…and all of this will ease the progress of his copulation._

She couldn't process his words, lost behind her own cries. The prehensile tongue was delving into her, retracting, and driving in again, over and over. It grew… _thicker_  somehow, coiling itself, doubling in girth during every near-withdrawal from her aching hole. Her sensitive walls resisted each increasingly punishing penetration, squeezing down around the invading muscle. Her flesh began to tingle - first, her labia, and then deeper inside. She felt her blood pulsing in her groin, and then a stinging numbness that followed wherever the Licker's tongue had been.

_Yes…you feel it now. The swelling. Oh, your soft parts are burning up, aren't they?_

Her tears blurring her vision, she looked up again, searching for him. He sat in a metal folding chair across from her.

_My poor Valentine…you'll be so engorged and red soon…_

His legs were splayed apart. His pale cock arched up sharply towards his belly. He fisted it slowly, lazily, feeling each shudder of her muscles, feeling the blood rush to her irritated flesh. Feeling every tormenting stroke and thrust of the tongue.

_God…he's splitting you open like a flower, Jill. A beautiful wet flower._

Everything stung. Everything ached. She wept as the tongue laved her softest skin, and her anguish, her suffering, echoed back to her in the cavernous warehouse.

_Shh, shh, shh…he's only stretching you. Don't deny yourself this pleasure. How many humans do you imagine have had the privilege of feeling a bio organic weapon inside of them and lived?_

Without warning, the tongue withdrew. She sagged against the restraints, her inner muscles burning and clenching uselessly.

_Let it be over,_ she thought, hair sticking to the sweat on her throat.  _Please, God, let it be over…_

She heard a shuffling behind her. More clattering. The sound of the creature pacing, turning, positioning itself-

_Hmm…he's very ready._

"Wha…what does that mean?" she panted. "Wesker - what does that mean?"

He didn't answer.

He didn't need to.

She screamed as the Licker mounted her, claws digging into her shoulder blades, anchoring its body above her.

"Easy," he said, his voice barely carrying over her ragged cries. "Easy now."

The creature chattered above her. A thread of saliva splattered against the base of her neck, dripping down her back. The claws loosened, leaving behind a sharp sting.

Wesker stood then, his erection bobbing as he left his chair and walked around to inspect her prone body. He didn't bother to tuck himself back into his pants. Instead, he gently ran a hand down her heaving flank, as if he was inspecting an animal prepared for slaughter. Her sobbing renewed.

"Please, sir…I'll do anything," she choked. It was the same script each time. The same fruitless words, the same meaningless tears.  _She was sorry. She was sorry. She had done something, and she would fix it, and she would never do it again._ She had begged with him this way before. Too many times to count. "Please…I'm sorry, whatever I did, I'm so...I'm so sorry-"

_Shhh…quiet now._ His hand traced a lazy circle on her thigh, rubbing at the tight muscle.  _Do you know anything about this beautiful creature, Jill?_

He wasn't listening. He never listened. She would sob and scream her apologies until they tasted like blood on her tongue, and he never seemed to hear a word. She took great, gasping breaths, trying to find the strength to start again. To say the right thing. The inscrutable, unutterable thing he wanted to hear. Her nose dripped, tears and mucus running cold over her lips, down her chin. She snorted deep, tasting salt.

He raised his hand, and gently brushed the hair out of her eyes, off her messy face. She looked up; his red gaze was on her, hazy, curious…loving. He smiled softly.

_This particular B.O.W. -_

She heard him pat the Licker affectionately, felt the vibrations of it in her restraints. The monster purred wetly under his touch.

_\- came about after a variant of the venerable t-Virus was introduced to a run-of-the-mill zombie during the V-ACT process. Birkin used…swine cells, actually, to facilitate this mutation. As a result..._

Her eyes widened as she felt something graze the slick, butterflied flesh between her legs. She yelped.

… _this eager fellow…has retained some rather interesting…porcine features._

Whatever was touching her was thinner than its tongue. It was almost rubbery, seemingly uncontrolled, softly lashing her swollen labia. It slipped against her as the monster shifted, probing her vulnerable opening.

_He needs a bit of assistance at the start…but after I introduce him to the correct orifice, he should be able to manage._

He was behind her then, adjusting the beast. Its claws clicked and scraped on the metal frame of her restraints as it tried to gain purchase. There was a brushing against her thighs, and Wesker's hot fingers pinched the lips of her abused, swollen sex, pulling her apart obscenely. She whimpered and her hands balled into fists as she hung helplessly in the contraption, unable to defend herself, to close herself off from the hellish torture.

_Yes. There we go._

"Wesker… please," she tried again, her voice growing weaker. She'd been holding fast to a shred of hope, frail and fading, that he might take pity on her. It seemed to crumble before her eyes, joining the motes of dust that floated in the air around her.

She barely felt the fleshy tendril slip inside. It was thin, worm-like, meeting no resistance from her poor, tired muscles.

It had  _readied_  her for this. She was swollen, throbbing, and slick - slick with the strange pheromone, slick with the creature's stinging saliva, slick with her own aberrantly thick wetness. It felt like the barest brush against the walls of her numbed cunt, wriggling up, and up...and up…

_Oh, if only you could see this. It's magnificent. I would describe the shape of his penis as…very reminiscent of a hookworm?_

It tickled the defenseless mound of her cervix. It settled against the dip in the center, lightly prodding it...as though it were... _testing._

_So much farther than I can._ His words were an echo.  _So much farther._

"No!" The touch was enough to spark another wave of terror, and she pushed away so violently that the entire frame shook, lurching forward with her weight, but she remained pinned in place. "Please!  _Please!"_

She felt as if her wrists might shatter as she pulled, twisted, fingers flexing and clenching, grabbing desperately at the nothingness.

_You'll only exhaust yourself. Stop resisting. Focus on your breathing._

She saw him, from the very edge of her vision, stroking himself as he was crouched down beside them. He watched the monster mate with her, too closely, too intimately. His cockhead wept pearls of pre-ejaculate. Each drop glistened, catching the few rays of sunlight that shafted through the dark warehouse. He licked his lips.

_Focus…good. Any moment now..._

And with a repulsive whine, the monster penetrated the tightly-clenched muscle.

Her scream left her throat raw. The whole of her body shuddered, cramped, trying to force out the intrusion. Her vision sparked white with agony. She heard Wesker's sharp inhalation, and his hand tightened around his cock.

Her pleas were nearly incoherent now, distorted by forlorn sobs as the thing palpitated inside her, stretching the tender ring of her cervix. Foreign pain radiated through her as the creature rooted deeper and deeper, exploring the walls of her womb.

Each flutter and twitch of the appendage made her muscles contract and ripple, made her buck and arch and writhe. The feeling was sharp, piercing, scraping, pinching - too many things. It twisted inside of her, burrowing, tremoring.

_Oh god, that hurts your little hole…_

He moaned aloud, jerking himself harder, his mouth open and panting as he let her pain in. His head fell back as every sensation she was experiencing swept over him. She knew his eyes would have rolled upward at this point; she knew that he could feel every tug and stretch of her pouting cervix, every wriggle of the whip-like cock between her bloated, puffy lips. He slipped into a trance, overwhelmed by his own self-pleasure and by her suffering.

He was high with it all.

_Open yourself to him. The cramping will subside, Jill. Let him numb you…let him take you..._

She cried and cried, screaming until her voice broke, until her throat was on fire and her lungs were empty. But even in the throes of her debasement…she couldn't ignore that the worst of the pain was waning, her cervix perhaps finally giving up, loosening around the Licker's strange, narrow cock. Or maybe the monster's other secretions were laced with the same histamine compound as its wicked saliva. Numbing her.  _Opening_ her.

She still felt the whipping of the soft tendril in her belly; it was slowing. Eventually, the frantic search of her womb ceased…and the worm-phallus lay passive inside of her. The Licker was very still above the breeding rig. She could feel the tension in its hind legs, pressed against her thighs, which still trembled at intervals, despite her complete exhaustion.

"Please let me go," she whispered in the deafening quiet. "Please Wesker…I'll try harder...I'll do whatever you want…I've learned my lesson, I -" her desperate words dissolved into tears.

He watched her beseech him. He saw her violation, observed it, but his eyes coolly drifted over her as if he were watching from afar. He was oblivious to her anguish, her despair. He was  _beyond_  her, and quite possibly beyond their plane of existence. He squeezed the base of his own cock, down where his turgid flesh met a crown of curly blond hair. He took a deep breath.

_This male has been recorded to produce as much as 238 milliliters of semen in a single mating._

She stared at him.

_That's just over one U.S. measuring cup. By comparison, I'm able to ejaculate about a tablespoon of semen, if I've saved up for you._

She was silent.

_The next phase of coitus may take a while._

She felt a sudden pulse of come against the front wall of her uterus. And then another splash of hot liquid joined the first, warming her from the inside out. She twitched once, a low, simpering noise slipping from her lips, as she searched his eyes one last, desperate time.

His face was blank.

_You'll swell...and you'll swell...and you'll be certain it's too much, that you'll burst...I want to see your face, Jill. Your eyes. I want to know what they look like when your stomach bloats...when the pressure grows in your abdomen...I want to feel your insides stretch...feel them ache... so warm..._

He wasn't going to save her.

No one was going to save her.

Her body went slack in the restraints. The cold metal soothed her feverish skin, and she finally surrendered, letting herself be pumped full without so much as another sob.

* * *

She felt his hand on her back.

She didn't know how long it had been. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes. Perhaps a full half hour. She was limp in the breeding rig, muscles throbbing from the unnatural strain.

_It's gone._

She hadn't felt the creature disengage. She hadn't felt it slither loose from the numb mouth of her cervix.

_It's gone, Jill. I'm here. You're safe._

He rubbed her spine, working the dull ache at the very base, where her hips were wrenched apart. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut from weeping; she struggled to open them, to turn to see him.

_No, no. Stay still. You'll hurt yourself._ His hand fell away, and she felt him brush against her leg as he knelt to the floor, unlatching the ankle restraints.  _Don't move...let me help you…_

Her legs buckled, finally free from the metal bar, and she gave a quiet cry as her body slipped against the frame. The sound scratched her still-raw throat.

His arm was instantly around her, supporting her weight, as his free hand reached for the front of the rig.

_I've got you._ The locks clicked one after the other, pressure loosening against her wrists, her neck.  _There we go...I've got you…_

Everything in her trembled as he eased her upright. He guided her gently, moving her inch by inch away from the frame.  _It's gone,_ he said, again and again and again, as he gathered her up in his arms, and she slumped against him, loose, utterly spent.  _It's gone. It can't hurt you anymore. I'm here._

Her stomach ached. An unnatural weight rested deep in the pit of her, warm and full. Every movement exacerbated the strange pressure - he pulled her close against him, and lifted her, one arm beneath her legs, one against her back. She inhaled sharply as her muscles clenched and shuddered.

_I'm going to take care of you._ His face was very close to hers. His breath brushed her forehead, stirring her hair. His hands were warm on her skin, and he cradled her against him, walking slowly away from the rig.  _You won't have to feel it anymore…_

Her cunt throbbed angrily, each footstep jolting through her like an electrical current, no matter how carefully he moved. The skin was sore and stinging, and the delicate muscles inside felt as though they'd been stripped raw.

_Shhh. I know._

She hadn't made a sound. He raised a hand to the back of her head, holding her face close against his chest. She listened to the rise and fall of his breath. She felt as if she were drifting somewhere just outside her body.

The light changed as they passed through a door in the facility, and she blinked against the sudden brightness. She tried to twist away from him, to look around, but he held her tight against him.

_Don't._ He idly combed his fingers through the matted ends of her hair.  _I've got you._

She winced as he shifted her limp body in his arms, and she felt the warmth sloshing inside of her. The walls of her womb rippled, the dull pain growing sharper as the haze around her slowly lifted.

_I have to set you down._ His words were clear, calm, and she felt him nuzzling the crown of her head.  _I'm not leaving. I won't leave you._

She closed her eyes. The pain in her uterus was growing. She tried not to think about it...about the beast's organ spreading the tender pucker of her cervix, about her muscles shuddering in the wake of its toxic tongue. About rivulets of burning saliva and her own syrupy wetness rolling down her thigh, splashing to the floor, drop after fat, sticky drop...

_Jill...do you understand?_ His fingers tightened in her hair, almost imperceptibly.  _You're safe with me. I need to know that you hear me...that you trust me, yes?_

She nodded weakly against him. Her breath caught as he lowered her gently to a table. Cold metal kissed her skin. She jumped at the sensation, and the movement made her insides twist.

_It can't hurt you here._ His hands were on her face, cupping it, guiding her back down to the frigid table. His thumb brushed her cheek, following the tract of dried tears.  _It can't hurt you anymore. Lie still._

He walked to the end of the table. As he moved, his hand never left her, tracing the line of her body - down her neck, the curve of her shoulder, her quivering arm. He softly touched the dip of her waist, fingertips brushing up towards the swell of her stomach. They pushed down lightly, testing the tension of her stretched skin. She whimpered. Her own fingers curled weakly around the edge of the metal slab.

She panted as his touch drifted lower, away from her distended belly. He carefully avoided her swollen, battered sex, instead placing a hand on each thigh, slowly urging her legs apart.

_Oh...my poor, lovely girl...what has it done to you..._

She felt the fog around her lifting, felt the world sharpening and sparking back to life as he spread her legs and studied her throbbing sex. She snapped into full consciousness as he gazed at her, into her, a strange look of deep concentration on his face.  _Don't let him touch you,_ a deep, distant part of her mind screamed.  _Don't let him touch you, don't let him, he's going to hurt you again, he's going to pin you down and fuck you, don't let him hurt you, don't let him rape you-_

Her body responded sluggishly, her thighs drawing closed too slowly on his gentle hands, her hips twisting side to side, trying to wriggle from his grasp. Something thick sloshed in her belly, trapped inside of her womb. She keened, long and mournful.

"Jill… shhh…" he said, speaking to her for the first time. His fingers were on her face then, stroking her jaw, her cheek, her lips as she cried. "Shhh… I know… I know how painful it is."

She breathed hard, her distressed muscles bearing down on her swollen uterus. She tried to pull herself to sitting, tried to push him away. He placed a hand on her shoulder, kept her flat to the autopsy table. The thin, sterile metal beneath her creaked as she moved. She lifted her head, gazed down her prone body through her blurry vision.

"What's inside of me?" She slurred. "Did you let…did you let it put something inside of me?" Her voice grew more coherent and frantic with each word.

He frowned, his eyebrows knitting together in concern. He hesitated - even his  _thoughts_ were stuttering. Her heart pounded in her brain, her rising panic making her light-headed.

_All of its ejaculate is contained inside of your womb. There is a…sphragis...blocking the release of the fluids._

"What?" She asked, breathless. "A  _what_?"

"A mating plug," he replied, almost shamefully.

She began to hyperventilate, her lungs unable to expand, her ribs suddenly made of steel around them. Fresh tears rolled down her temples, wetting the hair there.

"Am I gonna die?" she whispered, her great red-rimmed eyes on him, begging, pleading.

"No…no, no, of course not," he said, shaking his head. "I would never let you die. Never." His hand still caressed her face, smoothed her hair. "Don't think such things."

She winced, gasping as an excruciating contraction ripped through her abdomen. Above, he bent double, hissing with her. He bared his teeth, grinding them.

She had almost forgotten - her pain, her pleasure,  _all of it_ , was his as well.

The force of the contraction lessened, and then stopped altogether. Both of them sighed in shared relief.

He stared down at her again, and his hand swept across her forehead, a gesture of comfort, or concern, or something she couldn't name. He nodded to her, to himself, and turned away.

He pulled a small container from his case. She watched him warily as he unscrewed the lid. Her pulse spiked in her throat.

_This is only lubricant. I'll have to...manually remove the plug..._

He dipped into the container, coating his finger liberally with the jelly. He sat it aside, and stopped before her, hand poised inches away from her cunt.

_Take a deep breath._

She did, holding the stale warehouse air in her lungs.

His lubricated finger trailed up and down her puffy, swollen labia, carefully wetting her entrance. She screwed her eyes closed, her nostrils flaring. Slowly, he slipped his finger tip into her throbbing hole, up the first knuckle. Her sore cunt fluttered around him, the soft membrane so inflamed and inflated that he felt  _cool_  to her for the first time ever. He stared between her trembling thighs, where his finger was engulfed by bright, beautiful red flesh that pulsed with every heartbeat. His lips parted and he swallowed hard.

She moaned, and her belly ached. Gingerly, he placed his other hand on her over-heated abdomen, his touch so feather-light, she barely felt it. She flinched.

_Don't be afraid._

He probed deeper, up to the second knuckle. Her bloated pussy seemed to suck at his finger. A reflex, her knees tried to come together but he stopped her from closing herself.

_Relax… open… good girl. Let me work. Let me help you._

He pushed deeper still, until she yelped, his fingertip meeting with her tender cervix. She bit her bottom lip, turning her face from him in her agony. The renewed pain took her breath away. He gently rubbed her belly as his other hand was busy between her thighs.

_You're doing so well, Jill. I know it hurts… I have to massage your deepest parts… I have to dislodge what it left in you._

From the corner of her burning eyes, she saw a rope of her own elastic mucus glinting in the low light of the lab as he withdrew. He didn't bother to wipe himself off, instead drenching the rest of his fingers with more lubricant jelly.

She let go of the breath she forgot she was holding.

_This will hurt terribly unless you trust me._

She trained her eyes on the single, cold light above. She stared so long and so unflinching, that her vision clouded over with dark floating spots.

He rolled his fingers on her splayed, sensitive lips, readying her for more penetration. She blinked, biting back the sob that threatened to open her throat.

_Do you trust me to bring you pleasure?_

She set her jaw… and nodded, because she had no choice. Lying before him, bare and broken, shivering and fevered all at once - too weak to move, too weak to protest, too weak to lift herself to her own wobbling, pitiful legs - she had no choice at all.

She had nothing but serum in her veins. His voice in her head. His hand between her legs.

Painstakingly slow, he twisted two long, hard fingers into her raw hole until he met the resistance of her cervix again. She arched and ground down on his hand, gasping and whining in the still, hot air. He turned his wrist, his knuckles rubbing and spreading her irritated inner flesh, forcing her open. She clenched, crying out, her own hand closing over his forearm, pulling and pushing, holding him tight to her sex, and then trying to drive him out of her body. She writhed, the soles of her bare feet slipping on the metal table, wet with her sweat.

_Good girl…you're so brave…you're so strong..._

He pumped her deliberately, mechanically, until the friction of his callused fingers melted the walls of her painful sex, until she felt a wave of inexplicable  _bliss_ every time he thrust. The monster's semen roiled and brewed inside of her with his ministrations. Her inflated womb pressed heavily on her bladder - a familiar pressure… a  _welcome_ pressure now, teetering somewhere between the most breathtaking pain and the sharpest edge of pleasure she had ever felt in her life.

_There it is. That's my girl…my sweet, beautiful girl…_

Her head lolled back on the examination table, his praises ringing in her skull. She was empty and full and a thousand other things all at once. Her protestations ceased, her hands fell away from his, her hips yawned as she opened for him.

She gave up all control.

_One more… just one more._

He withdrew; she groaned quietly in frustration. He smiled at her, mild and kind.

_You're a greedy thing._

Three elegant, soaking fingers teased the entrance of her sex. She raised her pelvis for him, supplicating, imploring him for relief. He pressed his thumb to the nub of her clit, circling the wet bundle of nerves. He concentrated on the tip, making her body jerk, making her mewl pitifully.

And then… all three of his fingers split her pussy. She sucked in a breath, fighting the urge to scream, to curl into herself. The hand that continued to manipulate her clitoris held her down.

"Stop!" she cried. Her body quivered. Her stomach ached fiercely. Her poor, tired muscles reluctantly shuddered to life beneath his touch. Each wave of unpredictable contractions ripped the breath from her. "Please stop!"

_I can't, Jill. You have to let me do this._

She wailed as he fucked her with the impossible thickness of his fingers. He slipped all the way in, as deep as he could go, and rubbed the surface of her cervix firmly, dipping a blunt fingertip into the tiny bruised hole at the mouth of her womb… over and over, relentless. She bucked and whimpered plaintively.

_You have to come. You've got to come on my fingers and force all the poison out._

She fought against the intrusion, against herself, against the nearly perverse climax that was building in her abused body. Her shaking hips rose up, a full foot from the table, as he drove his vicious fingers in and out of her, and fervidly pinched her tender clit.

The only sounds around her were her own labored breaths and the sickening  _squelch_ of his thrusting in her pillowy wet hole.

"Come," he said softly.

" _Please!"_ She convulsed under his hands.

"Oh dear heart…come for me." And it was like a prayer spilling from his lips.

Her spine suddenly arched - strung like a perfect, unnatural bow. Her vision faded, until there was nothing but deep, soft blackness.

Her entire body shook with the orgasm.

She had never felt anything like it. Every nerve, in places she had never felt, in places buried deep in the meat of her, was on fire. Her bones seemed to splinter, her tendons seemed to snap, her heart seemed to stop.

_Yes. Yes..._

Through the cloud of her ecstasy, she was aware of him, moaning with her.

She felt something trickle out between her thighs.

It was a slow leak at first. The barest edge of the pressure released, and with each quivering aftershock of her orgasm, more and more seeped out of her, puddling on the examination table. It was warm, and thick, and she could feel it dribbling from her aching entrance.

_That's it._ His thumb still brushed a slow, lazy circle on her clit, encouraging more spasms deep within her.  _Let it out. Push it out._

Her legs, still bent and spread, trembled fiercely. Her breath came in quick, gasping pants. Another cramp wracked her as the fluid oozed from the throbbing sphincter of her cervix.

He let his free hand settle just above her pubic bone, where she still felt unnaturally bloated. He splayed his fingers wide over her skin.

_Close your eyes._

She did.

And he pressed down on her stomach.

The sensation was unlike anything she'd ever felt before. The liquid  _gushed_ from her - viscous and oily, clinging to every crevice of her swollen sex. She moaned long and low as the tension in her womb finally released, bit by bit, beneath the steady guidance of his hand.

_There we go. You're nearly done…_

She could feel it pooling beneath her, hear it dripping down the edges of the table and splattering to the tile floor below. She could  _smell_ it - a fetid, feral smell. Something animal. Something else. Her throat closed against it.

_Don't-_ he began, but she had already tipped her head up, and opened her eyes, looking between her legs.

The substance that puddled around her, that sprayed from her in steady, pulsing jets, was opaque and streaked with red. It was the color of decay. The color of  _rot,_ glistening like sap beneath the lights, swirled with threads of her blood.

Her stomach churned as she watched it. A steady, noxious stream, spurting faster when another contraction fluttered through her, aided by Wesker's hand pumping it from her uterus.

She'd been full of that.

Of the monster's semen.

_More than a cup's worth._  That's what he had said.

The whole of her frame spasmed as she turned suddenly, lurching towards the edge of the table. She heaved, her empty stomach clenching and twisting, bile in her throat, bile on the floor, joining the steady drip of the creature's ejaculate.

"Oh god." Her voice was low, groaning, as she hung over the side of the cold metal slab. She curled into a ball, pressing her thighs tight together. They were slick and sticky with sweat, with lubricant, with the Licker's thick come. "Oh god, no. Oh my god…"

_Jill. Listen to me._ His hand was on her flank, on her hip, quick frantic touches. Unsure of where he should land.  _It won't take long for the rest to work its way out...the worst of this is behind you…_

She gagged again as her womb rippled, another thin stream of the substance leaking out between her tightly-closed legs. She heard him cough, gagging with her as a heavy drop squeezed its way through, rolling down the back of her thigh, down to the crease of her knee.

_Here now_ … _let's finish cleaning you up..._

He reached for her, moving to pick her up again.

"Don't touch me!" She screamed. Her words reverberated in the lab, pierced her eardrums, rasped her throat with their strength. The examination table quaked beneath her.

He stopped and stared in the hard white light. He seemed almost shocked.

Her shoulders heaved. She clenched her teeth tightly together, hissing her words. "Look at me."

"Jill —"

"Look what you did to me!" Fresh tears, hot and stinging, streamed down her cheeks, mixing with the dried sweat and the spit and the memory of everything else she'd suffered through. "You let it hurt me!"

His mouth gaped for a moment. His expression softened. He was, quite suddenly… a  _different_ Albert Wesker. "I didn't…" he started. He stopped. His eyes flashed strangely. "I...saved you."

"You...you  _saved…"_ She trailed off with a strangled sob, shaking her head furiously. "I'm bleeding inside! You didn't save me! You watched while it...you  _watched..._ how could you —" she choked, spittle coming up, wetting her mouth. With a shaking hand, she wiped at her lips.

_Jill._

"Get out of my fucking head!"

_I'm sorry._

"Shut up!"

"No… no no no, Jill… you don't understand, I —"

"Shut  _up!"_ She was nearly hysterical, her voice cracking as she screamed. "Don't tell me you're fucking sorry! You watched! You watched and you...you  _liked_ it…when it…"

"Please. I don't know what…I'm sorry." He said the forbidden words aloud -  _please_  and  _I'm sorry._ He took a hesitant step towards her.

She sat up, feeling more fluid gush from her ruined parts. She was wracked with another desperate yowl, looking down between her legs in horror.

"Oh, don't," he said, rushing to wedge a towel under her thighs. He tried to sop up the semen, succeeding in little more than smearing it around on the metal table top. She watched, her breath caught in her throat, her hands open and trembling and wet. Her stunned gaze volleyed between his fumbling and the distended, inflamed lips of her vagina. She shook with fear. With disbelief. With black, blistering fury.

"I promise," he began, authoritatively. He continued to wipe up the viscous body fluids. "You will recover in a few hours. I swear it. Your immunity to the t-Virus has already disarmed the toxins in the sperm, you'll absorb the rest as you would a…man's semen. And…the histamines will dissipate organically, or I can administer diphenhydramine, if you'd like. The swelling will subside in about an hour though, if you'd prefer to wait —"

"How…the fuck do you know?" She ground out, her jaw aching with tension.

He took a step back and dropped the wet towel in a large orange biohazard bin. He made great efforts to avoid her eyes.

She took a deep breath. "You've done this before," she whispered. "You've let it breed other women."

"I had to be certain...that it wouldn't harm you." He sounded distant. Strange.

She stared at him dumbly.

"Because I love you."

She felt her stomach flip.

He was insane. He was completely unhinged. She'd known...she'd known the moment she'd found him in that godforsaken mansion, covered in blood and gore. And now, after months spent with him, after months spent watching him teeter on the razor-thin edge of his sanity...

_Do you love me, Jill?_ he asked.

"Can you forgive me, Jill?" he begged.

Words made their way up her throat, into her mouth...but they withered there, against her dry, useless tongue. She couldn't speak.

She was too afraid to speak.

He nodded to himself, his eyes distant, unfocused. "I understand."

She froze on the table, every muscle tensed and poised.  _He was going to kill her now, he was going to finish what he'd started a year ago. But God help her, she wasn't ready to die - even after… even after all of this, the pain and the humiliation and the rape of her body, her mind… she should want to, she should want to go someplace he couldn't touch her, couldn't hurt her anymore, but she didn't want to die, she didn't want to die, she didn't_  -

"I know...how to fix this. I know how." He strode towards her, ignoring the way she shrank back, the way the whole of her body shook.

He was on his knees then, looking up at her, as she trembled on the metal table. She tried to jerk away as he grabbed her hand, but he pulled it close, pressing his lips to her palm. Pressing it to his face, forcing her to cup his cheek. He closed his eyes, holding her there.

"I know how to make you love me again," he murmured. "I know what you need."

She parted her lips. Her jaw quivered. Her fingers twitched against his skin, and her breath burned high and shallow in her chest.

She waited, counting her pulse. Too fast. It lept in her throat, stuttered behind her ribs.

He turned, whispering the words into her palm. "A  _sacrifice_."

* * *

_**September 22, 2007.** _

Excella hated coming down here. Down to the horrible isolated bunker in the middle of the barren savannah - one that Umbrella had built generations ago. The only reason it wasn't defunct was because he had insisted it remain viable. And it was no small fortune to keep it open for his… _research_. She questioned, often and loudly, what it was that Doctor Albert Wesker was researching at all out here in Africa.

He'd become utterly consumed with the ugly little pet he'd brought back with him from England. Several critical projects were delayed in the wake of his new…  _fascination_. It made her nervous - in fact, it made  _everyone_  nervous. Meeting after meeting with the board, questions she couldn't answer, money she couldn't account for, obstacles she couldn't name.

They were becoming impatient with their  _Genius Prince_.

She, on the other hand, had never been impressed with his showboating. She'd seen through his intimidating volatility, his false ambition. He was a phony, a snake oil salesman, plain as day. And it was only a matter of time before the men at the top ousted him with a well-orchestrated  _accident_.

She only had to hold on until that fateful day…

Her acrylic nails clicked against the metal railing in the elevator. A guard, one of  _his_  majini, stood straight and tall next to her, an enormous AR aimed at the dirty linoleum floor. She studied his profile - he was an objectively attractive young man, about her age. She smiled coyly at his reflection in the mirror above his head. He glanced up, catching her flirtation. He smiled back.

A rather large chunk of flesh had been chewed away at the corner of his mouth.

She rolled her eyes.  _Auto-cannibalism_  - a symptom of the Las Plagas virus.  _Such a waste_.

The elevator lurched a stop and the majini opened the gate for her.

* * *

She watched with disgust as one of Wesker's beloved monsters tried to drag the corpse of another through the bars of its enclosure. When it realized, with some difficulty, that its cage mate was too large, it began to devour whatever it could reach. One of the dead beast's forelegs had already been gnawed down to the bone; all that remained was some tattered flesh and its tell-tale claws.

She crossed her arms and sighed.

The scene was the same down every row of the lab. Half of the bioweapons were dead…  _slaughtered_ , actually. Clean shots, straight through their exposed brains. Their blood ran in watery rivulets down the central drains as technicians and scientists in hazmat suits sprayed out the pens with hoses and dragged the lifeless bodies to a cart in the center of the great room. Her white stilettos turned pink before her very eyes, irreparably stained with gore.

_$570,000 US dollars._  That was the price of a taking a single weapon from its most basic zombie variant to the biological wonder that was a  _Licker_. $570,000. She had counted thirteen dead B.O.W.s. A quick mental calculation brought the total loss of assets to a staggering $7,410,000.

"Gionne."

She turned to the familiar, grating voice.

Irving sauntered down the row of cages towards her, his hands in his cheap suit pockets, his hair a mop of ugly brown, hanging in his eyes. She glared. He joined her in watching the surviving Licker eat its brethren.

"Ain't this some shit?" he asked.

"Shut up, Ricky," she growled.

He chuckled. "They're not gonna like it up top."

She shook her head, her eyes unblinking. A bone crunched in bear-trap jaws; Irving grimaced at the sound. Excella watched the bloody scene for a moment longer, and then she turned to him.

"Does  _he_  know about this yet?" she asked, her hands on her hips, her rage barely restrained.

Irving raised his eyebrows. "Yeah… yeah, pretty sure he knows," he said.

" _Quella piccola stronza che so che è colpa sua_  -" Excella ranted in her native tongue. "Where is she? Where is  _quella_   _fica_? His fucking  _slave_. Where is she?"

Irving looked at her, sympathetically. He rubbed his nose. "There's somethin' you oughta see."

* * *

He tossed a little bag down in front of her.

"Mmm… thoughtful, but a bit early, isn't it?" she asked.

"You're gonna need that, trust me."

She eyed the bag before emptying the contents on the surface of the rusted iron desk. Agitated, she chopped up the cocaine with the edge of an old report print-out before forming a tight, long line of white.

He patted down his pockets and pulled out his wallet. He handed her a worn dollar bill.

She rolled it up and then snorted the coke as fast as she'd laid it. She let her head drop back, daintily wiping off the excess drug from under her nostril. She sniffed, and ran her finger along her gum.

Irving gestured to the majini at the security controls. "This was about two in the afternoon, yesterday," he said to Excella as he sat down on the edge of the desk.

Grainy footage revealed Doctor Wesker entering the Licker bay.

She leaned forward, watching carefully.

Wesker walked up and down the rows, peering into each cage… until at last, he settled on a certain beast. He opened the gate and  _leaned in_ , seeming to call it.

"So he takes that one out, right?" Irving nodded again to the majini.

The footage was a blur until Irving held his hand up.

"And… he brings it back like an hour later."

She squinted at the little black and white monitor. It was definitely Wesker again… guiding the Licker into its enclosure. "Why?" she asked under her breath.

"Who tha fuck knows… what he does next just… blows my fuckin' mind. Go on," he said, waving.

The footage fast-forwarded.

"Whoa...stop," he demanded, hopping off the desk. "Here. Watch this."

She stood up to better see.

It was indeed Wesker…systematically euthanizing the B.O.W.s.  _H_ _is_  own B.O.W.s. With a shot to the head, one after the other.

The flash from the muzzle of his gun lit up the screen, thirteen times.

Her hands balled into fists at her sides.

"Only the males," Irving said, running his hands through his messy hair. "He's somethin' else, isn't he - our Doctor Wesker?"

Excella stared blankly at the screen, left speechless, for perhaps the first time in her life.

"We gotta deal with him, Celly," he said quietly. "We're bleedin' out here."

"Kill the girl," she replied, her voice so low and venomous that it seemed not to come from her at all.

"Yeah…I dunno. That shit on her chest…and in his, whatever the fuck is going on there. You do somethin' to her, he might end up dead too." Irving crossed his arms.

"Well, that would be truly unfortunate," she snarled.

Irving smiled, a hideous lop-sided thing. "We can't lose him. Not yet... but soon."

Excella dropped back down into the rolling chair. She rubbed her forehead, just above her eyes, where a migraine was swiftly building.

"Maybe you should… distract him," he suggested.

Her eyes snapped open and scowled at him, her perfectly painted lip curling. "You must be kidding."

He shrugged, his hands in his pockets again. "You've done worse." He paused, grinning at some invisible memory. "You fucked me once, didn't ya?"

She swung back and forth in the squeaking chair, staring at the screen, paused on a flickering, snowy image of Albert Wesker reloading his magnum.

"I'm going to need a lot more of this," she said, holding up the empty bag.


	3. Seeing

" _ **...the soul immediately, as if struck directly by good or evil, unrestrained in its opinion that this object is very important to it, believes it for this reason to be worthy of all its attention; it directs all its faculties to its consideration; forgetting in this contemplation, in this desire or fear nearly all other objects: so it is in the case of a man struck down by an acute illness; he is not at liberty to think about anything unrelated to his pain. It is also in this sense that**_ _ **passions**_   _ **are the diseases of the soul."**_

_**-Denis Diderot** _

* * *

_**December 21, 1997.** _

Jill hurriedly dug through the unfolded laundry, elbow-deep, searching for her lucky panties.

She emptied the basket on her bed, thinking they might be stuck in the leg of her jeans, or bunched up in a shirt. She spread the clothes around on top of the comforter, the scent of the flowery fabric softener wafting up into the cold air of her bedroom. She plucked out a few wrinkled dryer sheets and then stood back, her hands on her hips.

No lucky panties anywhere.

She  _knew_  she'd just washed them. She'd worn them last weekend. And she really,  _really_ wanted to wear them again tonight...they practically guaranteed good sex. The scalloped black lace around the leg that somehow didn't itch, the perfect  _v_  just above her pussy, the fit across her round ass...the way she felt when she stripped down and stood before  _whoever_ the fortunate bastard was for the first time.

They just  _worked._

"Where are they?" she mumbled, staring at the mess of clothes.

The doorbell rang downstairs. She froze, her eyes wide. She glanced at the clock. It was only 5:14 - he wasn't supposed to pick her up until 6:30. Panicked, she unwound the heavy towel from her head, ripping her fingers through her tangled, wet hair. She pulled on a pair of flannel pants, stumbled and hopped on one leg and then the other. Her hands shaking, she yanked an inside-out t-shirt over her head, down over her bare breasts. She tugged on the hem, feeling the embroidered graphic on the wrong side of the shirt, scratching her hardened nipples.

The doorbell rang again.

"Be right there!" she snapped, looking at herself once more in the smudged dresser mirror.

* * *

"Sir?" She couldn't hide the shock in her voice when she opened the front door.

He removed his officer's hat as he stood on her front stoop. Snowflakes floated down from the night sky, landing on his shoulders, his face, melting. "Valentine," he replied in a cloud of his own breath.

She hesitated, staring at him incredulously for a moment. "Oh wow… uh, come in," she finally smiled, moving aside.

He stepped across the threshold, the bitter air rushing in behind him. She closed the door as he stomped in place on her welcome mat. And then he turned to her, his cheeks flushed pink from the cold.

She watched him, unsure... _perplexed_  by his visit. He had never dropped by like this before. He'd never been to her home at all. She pushed her hair out of her face, tucking the bob behind a delicate ear. His impassive, unreadable gaze fell to her chest, and then quickly averted.

She crossed her arms over her breasts, remembering that she had come to the door without a bra. She cursed herself, but the last person she'd expected to see was the Captain.

"I apologize for turning up unannounced," he began in his usual monotone. He unzipped his uniform coat halfway and reached in. He produced an evidence bag -  _the letter_. She felt her brows knit together as he spoke. "Nothing popped for this. Your prints, Kevin's…my own, of course."

She nodded seriously.

"I thought perhaps you'd like it back…in case you receive any other suspicious correspondence." He held out the bag.

Jill raised her eyebrows, taking it from him and quickly wrapping her arm around herself again. "To compare," she agreed.

"Exactly. Although I'm certain it's an isolated incident." He zipped up his coat and adjusted the collar. "That sort of passion is... _unsustainable_."

"I hope," she sighed. "You on patrol tonight?"

"I am. Unfortunately." He flexed his hands and pulled at the cuff of his leather gloves.

She frowned, looking out the window at the dark sky and the swirling snow. "Do you want something to drink? Something hot?"

He glanced up at her.

"Unless you've gotta get back…on the road...right away," she continued in the strange silence.

"I don't," he said.

* * *

The coffee maker dribbled into the carafe at a snail's pace. Jill watched it. Focused on it. Forced herself to stare at it, as if it was the most fascinating process she'd ever seen.

She could feel him behind her, horribly out of place at her sad little kitchen table...and  _kitchen table_  was a generous description. It wasn't anything but an old, worn card table, the padded green top torn in the corner, stained in the center. Her mother had decided to toss it when she'd left her Bridge Club after a fall out with a friend. Another hand-me-down that Jill, fresh out of the service, had taken when she moved into her townhome in Raccoon.

Everything around her was a hand-me-down. Everything was old. Broken.

Embarrassing.

She'd found a clean mug in the very back of a cabinet. One with a chipped rim and a silhouette of the Seattle skyline on it.

She'd never been to Seattle.

And that had been fine, until  _he_  had shown up. Now she was in her own kitchen praying her boss wouldn't ask when she'd visited the Pacific Northwest, so that she wouldn't have to stammer over an awkward answer about how  _she hadn't been there, she hadn't been anywhere the military hadn't sent her actually, she was living with everyone's cast-offs because she'd spent all of her money on the baby grand piano in the tiny guest room, would he like to see it, of course he wouldn't, and the rest of her pathetic public service paycheck went to the roof over her head and keeping the goddamn electric on and -_

The coffee maker spluttered, near the end of brewing. She heard the toe of his boot tapping on her linoleum floor, as he rocked back in the chair. The one from her sister. Which didn't match the other two.

He was unnervingly quiet.

And the kitchen was unnervingly small, with him in it.

"What do you take?" she asked, her voice cracking. "In your coffee."

"Nothing," he said, as the machine mercifully  _dinged_.

She breathed a sigh of relief, her hand unsteady as she poured him a cup of plain...black…acrid coffee. "How long is your shift, sir?" she asked, trying desperately to fill the silence.

"Until two." He crossed his impossibly long legs at the ankle. "You don't have to keep calling me that, Jill."

He took the coffee from her hands and sipped carefully, the steam from it obscuring his face. She watched him.

"I'm not keeping you from anything, am I?" he asked, setting the mug down on the tabletop next to his cap.

"Oh no," she said, leaning back against the cabinets. "I'm going out…but that's…later."

Wesker nodded slowly. He seemed to stare through her, his eyes narrowed and icy. "A date?"

"Don't say it like that." She licked her lips and laughed. She blushed, feeling the rush of blood creeping up her throat. "Yeah, kind of a date," she admitted after a beat.

"Kind of...a  _date_ ," he repeated, his thin lips threatening his trademark smirk.

"Do you have any big plans this weekend?" she asked.

"None." He picked up the coffee and took another sip.

"No exciting dates of your own?" She smiled and joked, trying too hard, and then realized how it sounded, as soon as the words left her mouth. She held the smile, though...there was nothing else she could do. It felt like paste on her lips.

He smiled back; it didn't reach his frozen eyes. "Never," he said, without a hint of sarcasm.

She shifted her weight, her fingers busily picking at a torn cuticle. "I'm sorry…I shouldn't have asked. You might be married…I wouldn't know."

He sighed and rose from the chair, the chipped Seattle mug in his hands. He moved across the kitchen, soundlessly.

Her spine was rigid as she watched him walk towards her, her jaw tensing. She swallowed and braced herself against the countertop.

He came to stand directly in front of her, barely a foot of space between them. He paused there, and the air was electric. Her eyes darted to his taciturn face.

"I feel married," he said softly. He reached around to set the mug down in the sink…and then he turned away from her, retrieved his hat from the table, pulled it on and adjusted it by the brim. "More often than not…I feel very much married."

She exhaled, her muscles releasing as the tension dissipated. "To the job?" she asked.

He stopped in the archway of the kitchen, thoughtful. "To…some  _element_  of the job, yes." He looked her over once more. "Thank you, for the coffee. I'll see myself out. Do be safe on your date tonight, Officer."

"Yes, sir," she replied, tucking her hair behind her ear again. "You too."

"Always," his voice carried back to her.

The front door opened and closed.

She left the letter on the counter, next to the coffee maker, and headed upstairs to finish getting ready.

* * *

_Twenty steps._

_Nineteen steps._

_Eighteen steps._

He counted every step back to his car. The ice crunched beneath his boots. He held his breath.

_Keep it together._

_Do not._

_Not here._

_Five steps._

_Four steps._

He jammed his hand into his coat pocket and yanked out his keys, his fingers already numb inside the glove. The air was bitterly cold.

The keys rattled as he searched for the right one. Rounded. Silver. Ford.

_Three._

The cold stung his face. His breath curled like fog before him. The coffee had been bitter and cheap. It stuck to his tongue. He would taste it for hours to come.

_Two._

Heavy bronze office keys clattered together. Ice cracked on the dead grass. She'd smelled like fresh laundry. Her house had smelled like old furniture, old wood, dust. Her hair had been damp. Dark. It had caught the light when she moved.

_One._

_Unlock the car. Open the door. Get inside..._

The key slipped. Scratched against the car. Fell from his hands, landing on the edge of the frosted lawn. A dull thud.

A wild sound tore at his throat.

He swallowed it.

He wouldn't.

He  _would not_.

He looked up then, and stood very still. He stared at his reflection in the driver's window. What did she see, when she looked at him?

Did she see anything at all?

A man? A superior? An idea…of a man who was her superior, who signed her checks, who told her what to do? Another man. Another man in a string of men she did not  _love._

More likely than any of that, she saw… _nothing_ , when she looked at him. Nothing at all.

He crouched down and picked the cold metal keys out of the grass. The snow had stopped falling, leaving nothing but bleak, numbing cold.

_Start again._

_Unlock the car. Open the door. Get in the car._

The key slipped into the lock. The lock clicked as he twisted. He pulled the key free. His fingers curled around the handle. He pulled.

The door opened.

_Inside. Get inside._

He tugged the key loose, ducked into the vehicle. Snow from his boots fell to the rubber floor mat. He leaned back against the seat, every muscle too tense, and too limp.

_Close the door._

He reached for it blindly. His hand found the handle, his knuckles scraping down the plastic of the door well, probably bruising despite the glove. He would feel it and remember later. He gave it an angry tug.

The door slammed shut, sweeping a burst of cold air into the car.

The world outside was dark and quiet. The world inside was dark and quiet. He could see her house lights from the corner of his eye, warm and gold. Still on while she got ready. While she undressed and dressed again and got ready for-

_Start the car._

He fumbled for the ignition. The key shook in his hand.

_Goddamnit. Not here._

_Not here._

The dark, quiet world felt too tight. It wrapped around his chest and throat. The edges of it bled together, bled to a blur. Bled and bled…

_Start the car._

The key slipped into place. He turned it. The vehicle clicked and hummed, roaring to life, all light and noise. " _Dispatch,"_ a disembodied voice, full of static, came through the radio. "... _there's an abandoned vehicle on North Ennersdale. Civilian says white Mitsubishi, been there for a week. Over."_

He glared at the dash, breathing deeply through his nose.

_Drive._

" _Anyone copy? Over."_

Static again. Humming. Buzzing. He stared at the monitor.

_"Copy that dis-"_

Another voice, another one, more voices,  _voices voices voices._ He slammed his fist against the console. It shook, bolted firmly in place. The monitor flickered. The voice crackled, but kept talking, still talking, always  _talking…_

He grabbed it with both hands, ripping it away from the dash. The monitor broke free, a tangled mess of wires trailing from it. The noise died. He tossed it to the passenger seat, turning back, looking out the windshield.

No more voices.

He ground his jaw. His fingers were like claws around the head of the gear shift. He yanked it out of park, and placed his hands on the wheel, and found the gas pedal.

_Drive._

_Leave._

_Go._

He did.

He drove.

He left her house behind, with its gentle gold lights and its warm smells and the coffee cup in the sink. She wouldn't have washed it yet. She wouldn't wash it until later tonight. Tomorrow morning.

Streetlights glinted off the snow. They blurred together as the car passed, bright splotches in the dark, growing sparser as he drove further and further. The yellow lines on the pavement snaked before him, guiding him down the twisting back road, away from the grating tranquility of the suburbs.

 _Tomorrow morning._ She'd wash the mug then. After her  _date._ After a man - another man, a stranger to him, maybe not a  _stranger_  to him _,_ someone else - had seen her, kissed her, touched her, tasted her. She'd come home with him all over her, inside her, bright morning light and melting snow and a mark on her neck from his lips and his teeth and -

He peeled off the road, onto the shoulder, slamming on the breaks. The town flickered in his rearview mirror. Before him, nothing - the sprawling forest, the Arklay mountains rising in the distance, their dull peaks hidden by the grey clouds, the slow-rising moon.

He gasped then, inexplicably short of breath. He grabbed at his chest, panting, tearing at the collar of his coat. It was too hot. It was so  _fucking_ hot in the car. He found the window crank on the door, violently wound it until it caught and stopped. Biting wind swelled in, flooding the cab, freezing his flushed face… anesthetizing him.

He sat very still as the December evening poured over him. And yet his body trembled, shook, quivered in its fever.

Slowly, he unzipped his coat, tooth by metal tooth.

He looked up as a semi-truck passed by, momentarily blinding in the mirror, the oversized engine deafening him in its wake. Red tail lights trailed behind in the darkness, reflecting off the wet black road until the truck disappeared completely.

He stripped the glove from his right hand, finger by leather finger, his eyes fixed on some invisible point outside the car, outside in space. He laid the glove on the dashboard, his every movement measured and deliberate. The air around him felt thick, rippling like chilly, murky water.

He undid the tight buttons at the collar of his shirt, his expression serene, his eyes absent. He slipped his bare hand inside, under the kevlar vest, under the fabric of his uniform. He didn't flinch as his cold fingers met and explored his warm flesh. He took a halting breath as he touched  _it_ … hardened, the skin so tight as it stretched, attempting to heal. Long and jagged and terribly painful. In his mind's eye, he could see it - the black thread, the angry puckered line.

It had been one of the deepest wounds he'd ever sustained.

 _Inflicted._  One of the deepest wounds he'd ever inflicted.

His combat knife. A sloppy cut, hastily done in the men's room at the office. He'd been out of his mind in that moment, barely conscious of his own actions…only acutely, intensely aware of his humiliation, his  _rage_.

His heart began to pound. He could hear it in his head, feel the throb of it in his temples. There was only one way to handle this. He was very afraid. But he  _had_  to. He  _must_.

_Do it._

_Do it._

He grunted, pulling hard on the stiffened little knot where the sutures were tied closed. He tugged, wincing at the sharp twinge of deep pain. And then he pried…and he ripped...feeling each stitch  _pop_  through his skin,  _tear_  through his skin, undoing every bit progress the wound had made.

_Do it._

He finally cried aloud as the last stitch was pulled free of his chest, his mournful howl echoing around the car, floating out the open window. He yanked his hand out from his shirt, staring at it. In the moonlight, in the glow of his headlights, he could see his fingertips, coated in blood. Blood he felt leaking beneath the bulletproof vest, a steady, profuse flow. The newly-opened wound raged and stung and  _burned_.

Taking deep, shaking breaths, he reached across the passenger seat and punched the glove compartment until it fell open, spilling business cards and plastic utensils and blank traffic tickets. He dug through the mess, his other hand pressing down on his chest, trying to staunch the flow of blood. He grabbed a fistful of fast food napkins and shoved them down his shirt, hissing, tossing his head against the seat as the paper rasped his wound.

He remained there, panting and bleeding, his mind mercifully blank as the nerves fired out their wonderous synapses, crying in agony to his listless, euphoric brain.

And when the pain finally subsided...when his shirt had dried to his chest, and his pulse had steadied, and the air felt sharp and cold on him again...he thought of her.

Alabaster skin like marble. Crystalline eyes closing as she let her head fall back. Chestnut hair sticking to her throat. Someone's name in her full, wet mouth.

No. There wasn't enough pain in the world to forget Jill Valentine.

* * *

_**December 17, 1997.** _

It was far too easy to pick the front door lock.

She, of all people, should have known to be more careful. A girl who spent her youth learning all about driver pins and tension wrenches, and her own home - tucked away at the end of a quiet, lonely street - was open in a matter of moments.

She would be on duty for at least another hour. Maybe two. And her home was like a beacon, like a lamp drawing him in from the dark. Inviting him over the threshold.

The door shut softly behind him.

There was a kind of stillness to the house...a kind of breathlessness...that made him feel as if he'd stepped into a sacred place. Just a simple townhome, with off-white carpet and eggshell walls, with scuffed wood trim and threadbare curtains. But it was all exactly how it should be.

Exactly as he'd imagined it. Simple and pure and perfect.

He passed through the small living room, fingertips skimming over surfaces as he walked. The sweater hanging beside the door, its fabric rough and pilled. The little end table with its faded wood polish, a simple ceramic dish on top. The back of the worn leather sofa, sunbleached, seams cracking.

He stroked the curved back. And tried not to imagine how many men had fucked her there.

How many had pressed her down against the leather. Spread her beautiful thighs. Seen the perfect pout of her cunt, the creamy blush-pink skin. How many men had taken her, rutting into her like animals.

He tried not to imagine her gripping the cushion. Arching. Mewling.

He passed through to the main hall. To his left, a little kitchen - linoleum tile, a clean stove with old coil burners. To the right, a room swallowed by an elegant baby grand piano. Before him, a set of stairs, leading up into shadows.

He walked forward. Each step creaked beneath his boots. The stairs ended at the top of a tight hall, with three open doors, leading to three dim rooms.

He pushed open the door to his right. It led to her bathroom...small and unassuming. He crossed it in three strides, walking towards the tub.

He pulled back the vinyl shower curtain. A metal basket clung to the tile wall with suction cups, overstuffed with bottles and bars of soap. A dark blue bath sponge hung from the rusted faucet. He reached for it, and found it disappointingly dry.

Still, he pressed it close to his face, breathing in deeply. The smell -  _her_ smell - clung to it faintly. A scent he couldn't name. Ripe fruit and warm herbs and fresh green things.

He thought of her in the shower. Slick damp skin. Soft, sweet fragrances. Rivulets of warm water running down her face. Her throat. The generous swell of her breasts.

His blood stirred. His groin tightened.

He reluctantly hung the sponge back on the spigot, reaching for the mismatched bottles in the wire basket. One by one, he opened the caps, inhaling deeply. Blackberry, vanilla, freesia, lavender...something he couldn't name, the label faded and smudged. All mingling to form the intangible perfume he caught each morning as he passed her in the hall at work...but missing something. Some essential, indescribable layer. Missing the true  _heat_ of her scent.

He pulled the curtain closed, turning back to the rest of the bathroom.

The toilet sat beside the sink. He walked towards it, delicately lifting the lid, and then the seat, inspecting the basin. Clean. Nearly spotless, save for the faintest brown water stain streaked down the bowl. No splashes of pale yellow on the back of the seat, no evidence at all that she'd used it. He was sorry for it.

The bathroom counter was small, the sink white and simple. A dispenser of soap sat in the corner, full of glistening amber-colored liquid. Opposite it was her toothbrush, perched in a blue cup with a nearly empty tube of toothpaste.

He picked up the brush, examining it. It was a light shade of periwinkle. Everything she owned seemed to be blue - cobalt and navy and piercing, bright sky blue, and all the shades in between.

 _A calming color,_ psychology said. Serene and stable. An escape from the rancid, stinking  _foulness_ of the world. From the maddening chaos.

He couldn't blame her.

He stared down at the bristles - fraying and faded. Her teeth were lovely, neat and even and pearl-white. He rarely saw them. Her smile was tightly contained. Her smile was a  _secret_. Nothing but softly curled lips.

But whenever he did see them...whenever she laughed, grinned, said anything that pulled the perfect cupid's bow of her lip up and away...he ached to feel her stinging bite against his skin. To run his tongue across the chiseled edges of her incisors, the sharp points of her cuspids. To taste, to learn every inch of her mouth.

He placed the brush back in the cup, running his fingertip across the soft, faded bristles. And then he stepped out of the bathroom, crossing the hall.

Through the cracked door, he could see the outline of her bed. The moonlight spilling through her window. He fingered the door knob - plain round brass, worn from years of use - before he slipped into the room.

The carpet here was wonderfully plush, compared to the rest of her home. It swallowed the sound of his footsteps. A kind of hush settled all across the room, as if time froze here. As if the very universe converged here, and hung suspended, inanimate.

His every muscle trembled as he crossed the floor.

The bed was small - a full, at most. No headboard. Neatly made with three pillows, and a cotton duvet, and a throw tossed casually across one corner. Practical. Uncomplicated.

His chest clenched as he reached out, fingers stroking the fabric of the cover.

_Practical. Uncomplicated. The place where she slept...naked, perhaps, with her long, lovely legs twisted in the sheets, with her breath slow and even, with her lips parted in a dream...where she woke, her body morning-soft, morning-wet, stretching against the sun that filtered through the curtains and painted her skin with a gentle halo of gold..._

The clenching grew tighter. Unbearably tight. He gripped the duvet, prepared to draw it closer to his body, to wrap himself in it...and instead, he found himself leaning forward, crawling onto the bed, on his hands and on his knees, the tightness in his chest digging deeper, spreading further, until the whole of him quivered with barely-bridled desperation.

He took a shaking breath as he reached the pillows. He thought of her hair...her rich brown hair, the color of late autumn, brushing her shoulders, tangled across the pillow as she turned in her sleep…

He lowered his face to the pillows, breathing deeply. The same scent. The same scent everywhere. Every inch of her home, every inch of her body. He filled his lungs with it, held it inside him. Craved more of it.  _Coveted_  it.

His body - a weak, perverse thing - writhed atop the bed as he gathered the pillow closer, burying his nose in the soft, worn cotton. His cock twitched and throbbed as he thought of her here, in this bed, beneath him, above him.

Thought of her alone. Touching herself. Fingers parting the velvet flesh between her legs, grazing the beautiful swollen pearl at the crest of her sex. Whispering his name into the dark, again and again.

As lost in him as he was in her.

He bared his teeth at the image, growling into the pillow. He arched sharply up, reveling in the frustrating friction of the bed against his groin. The sheets bunched beneath him.

He needed  _more_  of her. More than fleeting images and fading scents. More than dark rooms full of shadows and specters. He needed so much more. He needed her gaze. He needed her voice. He needed her breath and her skin and her bones. He needed her heart, red and raw, beating in his hand.

He needed all of her.

He was ravenous, delirious with the thought of her - of touching her, taking her, staring into her lovely blue eyes as he devoured her. As he broke her into a million shards, so no one else might ever look at her again.

With a great, painful effort, he tore himself from the pillow, pushing off of the bed. There wasn't enough of her here...not enough to sate him. His blood thrummed with a prowling, predatory instinct, wild in his veins.

It drove him to cross the room. To stand before her dresser, and yank the drawers open one by one, the contents rattling with the force of his movements. The mirror above the bureau shook with his frenetic searching, the reflection of the bed vibrating.

He rifled through each drawer - half-used tubes of chapstick, sunglasses, hair ties, socks, folded pajamas. He didn't know what he was searching for, but he felt as if a kind of possession had settled over him, driving him towards  _something..._ something that would call to him when he found it, and make him feel as if he held the slightest measure of her soul in his palm…

In the bottom drawer, he found something that made his blood freeze. He held his breath, his nostrils flaring, his teeth grinding, near to the point of pain.

An opened box of condoms.  _Okamoto Crown_ , reservoir-tipped, unlubricated.

The color drained from his face. It was a brand he knew well. They were rare stateside; she would have had to  _search_  for them. The thought…the very  _thought_  of her seeking out Crowns for someone...

He grabbed the box, crushing it in his fist, several of the gold foil packets falling out. He bent down, furiously snatching the stray condoms off the floor. He jammed all of them in his pocket, punching them down so that none would escape. He wouldn't allow her to…  _defile_  herself with another man. This would give her pause, at least, when there was someone  _else_  in her bed, waiting for her. She would think twice, he knew. She was careful and even-tempered, and she would surely  _reconsider_  intercourse, if he only helped her see the truth.

He would protect her from herself when she was too blind to her own foolish decisions.

He would protect her, when no one else would.

He felt his skin pricking, itching, crawling.  _He should count them_. He should count the condoms, and see how many she had used, determine how many times she had lain with someone who  _wasn't him,_  allowed someone who  _wasn't him_  to climax in her, on the bed that didn't belong to  _him._

But he was running out of time.

He continued to dig through the drawer, pushing aside plain padded bras, parting a tangled pile of panties and camisoles. Mattes and neutrals, some black. Nothing particularly flashy or elaborate. Her lingerie was as understated as the rest of her, beautiful in its simplicity, revealing to him their mutual appreciation for both form and function.

Under the mound of intimates, he discovered a half-used bottle of KY. He ran his fingertips over the plastic, feeling the slickness of dribbled liquid. Shivering at the knowledge that she had used the lubricant -  _recently_.

He moved a satiny tank top, and his eyes immediately spied something flesh-colored. He yanked his hand back, startled.

A  _toy_.

His stomach in his throat, he reached down, slowly brushing a pair of grey panties out of the way. It was a rather large dildo - all one tone of pink-peach, with a very flared corona and wide head. The girth was impressive, but realistic; the length was comparative to his own cock, when erect.

Steeling himself, he picked it up.

It was heavy in his hand, bending under its own weight, the tip drooping almost sadly toward the floor. He rubbed the shaft, feeling the life-like texture of the silicone. It was deceptively  _real_.

He remembered the KY. The messy drizzle over the side of the bottle.

She'd used this, not long ago. Perhaps the night before. He recalled her schedule - she'd gotten off work around one in the morning. Certainly too late in the evening for someone as responsible as Jill to engage with a partner. No…no, she would have found comfort in her own touch last night.

He was certain that the dildo in his hand had been inside of her. A muscle in his cheek twitched, as he played out every excruciating detail of the scene.

She would have knelt on her bed, dripping the lubricant over the the thick head of the toy first…given the length a few slippery strokes, just before massaging it between the petals of her wholly unprepared sex. Certainly, she was the type of woman who enjoyed a bit of resistance, preferring penetration she was  _not quite_  ready for, relishing the sensation of her flesh yielding with the weakest of burns…she would have trembled and cried at the painful insertion she'd forced on herself, her walls pushed open and fluttering around the unrelenting silicone…

She would have watched her own agony in the mirror over her dresser, her thighs spread obscenely in want of firm hands to pry them open, her eyes half-lidded, her mouth set in a perfect, tormented  _o_.

Incoherent, aberrant,  _unreachable_ , he brought the toy under his nose and inhaled deeply. Blood pumped savagely through him, straight to his restrained cock.

_Oh, if he only had the time…_

Disheartened, he sighed and replaced the dildo in the drawer, concealing it with her undergarments, exactly as he had found it.

Quietly, he closed every drawer in the dresser. He slowly straightened the bed where he'd ground himself against her sheets and pillows.

Moving back to the center of her bedroom, he stood, his hands on his hips, his poor erection aching against the biting zipper of his fly. He looked around once more, the feeling that he was missing  _something_  still nagging at him.

His gaze fell upon a heap of fragrant laundry in a deep, rubber basket.

A pair of whorish black lace panties lay on top of the pile...as if by  _fate_.

* * *

_**2006.** _

_Jill._

The world was black. Nothing existed…except the voice. Her head rolled between her shoulders, her neck weak. Her hands clenched and unclenched, restrained…by  _something_ , to  _something_.

_Jill._

She moaned, leaning forward. Everything moved in dreamtime.

_Open your eyes, angel._

She tried. She tried very hard. Her eyelids seemed to be leaden, lethargic - even to lift them a  _fraction_  of an inch was an impossibility. She whined, her lashes fluttering on her cheeks.

_Keep trying._

She wanted to sleep. She wanted silence. She felt numb and heavy, her body strangely untethered.

_No, Jill. Keep trying…_

The voice was persistent. It was clear and low, familiar and strange. She pried one eye open, the thinnest sliver of light creeping through her wet eyelashes.

She winced.

_Shh. I know...try again…one more time..._

She opened them slowly. Carefully. She thought she must be trembling with the effort.

_There you go._

She blinked. Everything was a dull, hazy blur. A shapeless world with strange lights and colors. Her wrists flexed, ached and pulled against the resistance of something.

_My sweet girl._

She squinted and forced herself to sit up straighter. A bright orange flickering cracked and popped to her right - a fire. She could feel the heat of it on her side. She swallowed, and her own saliva rasped her throat raw.

_You can hear me. I know you can._

She shook her head, trying to clear it. "Help," she wheezed. "Help me."

_I have helped you. Don't be afraid._

Her fingers twisted and weakly clawed at whatever her arms were bound to. Smooth padding…cold metal. She jerked in her bondage, and the entire contraption that held her lurched.

_You're almost fixed, Jill. You will be so much better once the final surgery is complete. Nearer to me than any living thing on earth..._

The voice was resolute - deep and full, coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. It rang in her head. She leaned forward, feeling the world around her shift.

Suddenly, she was moving. She felt wheels bump over the edge of something, the edge of a rug, perhaps, and the heat of the fire faded away, leaving her skin to chill and goosebump. The place, the room, the dream -  _wherever_  she was - blurred around her, her vision still too slow to catch up. She was dizzy. Nauseous.

"Please," she whispered.

_Shh._

The movement stopped. She balled her hands into small, impotent fists, testing the strength of her restraints again.

Warm fingers, painfully gentle, stroked her jaw, trailed under her chin and guided her towards a source of dim light.

_Look._

Her stomach had stopped flipping. She opened her eyes.

Her own face stared back at her.

Pale. Gaunt. An undead thing.

She gasped, her throat closing, her breath stuttering, choking her.

Her hands had been cuffed to the arms of the wheelchair where she slumped. Panicked, she fought against her bindings again, to no avail. She cried out, her voice hoarse and gravelly.

Her body was naked, the whole of her flesh sickly and ashen, nearly translucent. She could see the web of her blue-green veins, a messy network pumping blood through her, and she could see the ivory ridges of her bones protruding beneath her skin. Something red glimmered in the warped surface of the mirror. A kind of gem nestled in the middle of her chest, attached with tubes and coils that disappeared  _under_ and  _into_. Staring at it, she could  _feel_   _it_. She could feel the metal conduits, the rubber lines that tangled and weaved around and through her ribs. Her heart seized, throbbing painfully as her pulse rocketed.

Her head had been shaved - a long, swollen gash split down her skull like lightning, stapled back together carefully, evenly. The strange, dim light of the room caught on the metal, glinting in the reflection. Her hair was only beginning to grow in, her head fuzzy and eerily white.

Long fingers trailed down her throat, and caressed her frail shoulder.

_They've done such painstaking work on you. They've put you back together so neatly. You are almost…new._

She breathed in hard, nostrils flaring. Her hands shook in the restraints.

She had fallen. She had thrown herself from the window, and felt the ground shatter her body to a thousand pieces. She had felt the world crack, felt it fade, all black and empty.

She had died.

She had died, but she hadn't been alone.

Tears stung the corners of her eyes as she stared into the mirror. At her face. At her body.

At the fingers.

They rested against the dip of her clavicle. They rose and fell with each trembling, halting breath she took. Her unsteady gaze traveled up… up the wrist, the arm, as pale as her own. The curve of a sloping bicep in the firelight,. The defined shoulder. The pronounced Adam's apple in the throat.

She stared into Albert Wesker's luminous reptilian eyes.

Silent, stunned, a tear trailed down her cheek. It caught against her quivering lip. She tasted salt.

She had died.

She had  _died_.

She wasn't supposed to be here. She had thrown herself at him, her arms wrapped around his waist, wind rushing past them. The rocks had broken her fall, splintered her bones and ripped her muscles. They were supposed to find her mangled body at the bottom of the cliff, they were supposed to bury what was left of her, and she wasn't supposed to be  _here..._ not with him...not with his hand on her...

 _Oh no, no…don't cry. Is it your hair? I know it's a shock._ His fingers trailed back up her neck, her jaw, her cheek, brushing the fine hairs at her temple.  _But it will all grow back after the next surgery. Full and soft and lovely...you'll see. You will be more beautiful than ever before._

A raw, feral sob erupted from her throat. She tried to jerk away from him, and the chair rattled beneath her.

 _Don't strain yourself._ He knelt very close to her. He was hotter than the flickering fire had been.  _You're still quite delicate._

In the great golden mirror, her wide, terrified eyes followed his every slow move. Her chest heaved with each of her frantic breaths, her exposed breasts quivering at the edge of her vision. Her stare darted to his bare foot, to the bend of his knee, to his taut, hairless thigh. She could just make out the thick curve of his erect member through the dark fabric of whatever he wore.

An unearthly scream tore through her. Her body seized, shook. " _Help!_ " Her throat collapsed with the force of her plea. "Help me!" She screamed for her life, for someone,  _anyone,_ to hear her.

He stood then. "Now Jill…that's unnecessary," he said, his voice as flat and commanding as she remembered it the night she…the night they...

His voice.

His  _voice_. His mouth, moving.

She sank into the wheelchair,  _gaping_ at his reflection. He hadn't been speaking to her. He hadn't said a word, until now. His lips hadn't...he hadn't…

 _You_ can  _hear me, can't you?_

His voice…was in her head. He was inside of her. His voice was coming from inside of her.

_Inside._

Gutted, trembling, she could only fold in on herself. She didn't scream again - she couldn't have if she'd wanted to. Her breathing had all but ceased.

_I was concerned that Alex's device was faulty. My sister, though devious and cunning, is no engineer. But she outdid herself this time. Truly._

She blinked at him, completely still. He continued to speak to her, from within.

_The link…is from here —_

One of his fingers traced an invisible path from the top of her skull…

_To here._

His finger tapped the red jewel set in her sternum like a crowning solitaire stone, the very finest Marquis-cut ruby.

_It's poetic, don't you think? Head and heart. You and I. Finally united._

She stared at the glowing crystal, her labored breaths hollowing her cheeks. In the mirror, she saw him shift his weight, stand beside her wheelchair; she looked up. His skin was preternaturally pale - pearlescent and smooth in the firelight. Diaphanous black lace hugged the cruel, twitching bulge between his muscles thighs. The edge of his underwear was scalloped and elegant.

Scalloped on the leg.

Scalloped on the leg.

Her cracked lips parted. They trembled.

 _Do you recognize these?_  he asked, in her head, in her addled brain.

She began to cry in earnest then, yanking and struggling at her chained wrists, the entire chair rocking with her sorry efforts.

_You do, don't you? I had to take them from you, all those years ago. I couldn't stand the thought of you wearing them...for..._

He couldn't seem to finish the thought. She finally screamed, her vocal chords  _tearing_  in her agony.

_For anyone else._

She watched in paralyzing horror as he leaned over her. The shackles clicked as he unlocked the left wrist. The right.

_You should never worry…about being unattractive to me. That notion should never cross your mind. Even as you lay clinging to life...it saddens me so to recall…but even then, you were the most ethereal creature I had ever seen._

The tension in her wrists loosened. They dropped to the armrests.

She was free.

She stared at him in the mirror. His eyes held hers as he spoke - as he  _thought._ He traced an idle pattern on her right arm, looping, spiraling.

_For a month...perhaps a little more...I could not even bring myself to lay a hand on you. You were so removed, so peaceful...my perfect fallen angel._

She slowly pulled her arm away from his touch. He didn't flinch. Didn't reach for the restraints. He turned away from the mirror, looking up at her face. She watched his movements in the old, wavering glass.

She stared at the reflection of the door behind them.

_Rest assured, I took care to start slowly. Gently. Touching you first...a necessary part of your procedures, of course...but I found myself eager to learn more about you, and explore the places we never felt free enough to share with each other..._

She shivered in the chair. The air stung her bare skin. He gripped the armrest, staring up at her with something like...adoration.

She could run now. She was free. She could push herself away from the chair, and break for the door...there had to be something she could grab as a weapon...something she could...

_...explore all of you, with my fingers. My lips. My tongue. It was surprising, how easily I could stimulate your sexual response, given your state._

Her thoughts crashed to a halt.

Her stomach churned.

She turned away from the mirror. Turned slowly...very slowly...to meet his gaze. His eyes burned like coals in the dim room.

His lips turned up in a lazy, contented smile. He reached for her again, his fingertips tracing delicate bones of her hand.

_As still as a statue...as still as unblemished marble...but you opened beneath my hands. You flooded my mouth. Your body answered my call, Jill. Even so far away, you answered me._

The room pitched. Reeled. Her eyes flickered away from his, down to his hand. The way it moved back and forth across her bones, across the dark, snaking veins...eerily focused on them like he was reading braille. Finding the secret meaning in their pattern.

_You bloomed for me, without even knowing. And when I saw that...when I saw how much you craved me...How could I deny you?_

Something sharp and ice-cold twisted through her, clutching her chest, knocking the breath from her lungs. A jolt of pure, unbridled  _terror._

She gripped the armrests. Her knuckles turned a still-paler shade of white.

He reached up, his hand moving towards her face.

And she sprang from the chair.

She launched forward, desperate to get  _away..._ to run towards the door, to claw her way past whatever blocked her exit. But as soon as her weight shifted from her arms, her legs buckled beneath her, crumpling like crepe paper. She knocked against the wheelchair, sending it tumbling to the ground with a great clatter of metal.

_Oh, Jill...no, you can't walk yet...not yet…_

She heard him moving behind her. Heard him righting the wheelchair. She scrambled onto her stomach, teeth clenched against the raging pain that shot through her upper body, and the deadness that settled in the lower half. Her legs wouldn't move. Her hips wouldn't move. She twisted her torso, nails digging into the rug, crawling on her elbows. Forward. Forward towards the door.

_My poor, determined little angel…_

The exit was a few yards away. Just a few yards. She pulled her leaden body, inch by agonizing inch, towards it. One arm after the other. Everything trembling, everything protesting. The carpet scratched her breasts and stomach. Her face, her lungs, burned with the effort.

She heard the soft padding of his feet as he walked around her...the floorboards creaking as he bent down…

His palm settled somewhere on her shoulder, searing her skin like a brand. She cried out, a wailing, wounded animal, arching away from his hand.

_I know. It's awful...but you've been so brave, and you're so close now…_

Her screams fractured the air as he gathered her in his arms. As he shushed her gently, cradling her against his feverish, naked chest. As he nuzzled the crown of her head.

 _Let me take care of you._ His breath fanned across her naked scalp, down the back of her neck, as he carried her across the room. Away from the door.

Towards the magnificent four poster bed.

She pushed against him, feeble movements, her voice cracking pitifully with  _no_ and  _please_ and  _no_ again _._ With inarticulate things. With tears on her lips, and thick, wet mucus on her tongue.

 _Shh...I'll fix you. You'll be able to feel me very soon._ He held her tighter as she writhed, her sweating skin slipping against his. Her vision blurred with tears. She was certain her ribs would crack with the pounding of her heart.

_Until then...I'll tell you how you feel around me…_

_...how you feel inside…_

_...I'll tell you everything..._

* * *

_**December 19, 1997.** _

"I have ruined…and destroyed…other women…" Kevin read from the letter slowly, wiping tears from his eyes. "In an effort…to ruin and destroy  _you_."

Chris's high-pitched laughter rang through the little office, setting the rest of them off into a fit of hysterics. Jill smiled, shaking her head.

"This guy hasn't ruined anything but a bottle of fuckin' lube and a box of kleenex," Richard interjected.

"No, wait. Listen." Kevin cleared his throat, collected himself so he could continue. " _But you_ -" He pointed at Jill. She touched a hand to her heart, feigning indignation. "But you continue to exist-"

There was another round of riotous laughter as Jill siddled up to Kevin and peered over his shoulder as he read, mouthing the words along with him.

" _Oblivious… and cruel!"_

"What the fuck…" Chris wheezed, nearly choking on a sip of his Pepsi. "What did you do to this guy?"

"Well, for starters, I was oblivious  _and_ cruel," Jill said, matter-of-fact.

"Duh," Kevin added. He straightened his shoulders, preparing to launch into the next sentence.

"You're all having far too much fun for a Monday morning."

At the sound of Captain Wesker's voice, Richard slid off the edge of the desk he was sitting on, standing sheepishly. Chris stood too, and slipped a cigarette from behind his ear into his pocket.

Jill plucked the letter from Kevin's hands, frantically folding it.

"What's this?" Wesker asked, lifting his sunglasses. He smiled, false and horrible.

"Nothing, sir," Jill started. "I just got this…letter. By mistake."

"It's a  _love_  letter," Chris grinned.

"Well, let's see it, hmm?" He stared at Jill expectantly, his eyes as cold and blank as always.

Reluctant, she opened the letter back up and handed it to him. He took it from her, his devious smile still solidly in place.

The group watched, collectively holding their breath, as he scanned the page.

"It was Redfield," Enrico blurted out.

Everyone but the Captain erupted in choked laughter. Jill guffawed, turning away from them as her face blushed red.

"Redfield can't spell his own name," Wesker argued quietly, still reading. "Let alone write-"

"Hey!" Chris stammered, crossing his arms. Kevin punched him in the arm. "Dude, that's not-"

"Define  _ruminate_ ," Wesker deadpanned, finally looking up from the letter.

Chris snorted in disbelief, his lips moving but never quite forming words.

Wesker sighed as the group laughed again. He held up the letter, turning his attention back to Jill. "Officer Valentine, I don't find this funny at all. In fact, I think it's alarming."

"It was a mistake, sir. It has to be. No one…would send that to  _me_ ," she said dismissively.

"It was mailed to your home?" Wesker asked.

"It was...uh…" She gestured. "It was on my doorstep. Saturday night. It's gotta be a joke."

"A joke?" Wesker frowned at her.

"She  _does_  date a lot of clowns…" Enrico raised his eyebrows.

"You find humor in this?" Wesker shot a glare at him. He looked down at the letter again. " _I imagine slicing you open, from cunt to throat_ ," he read without any inflection. "That's funny to you, Enrico?"

The group was silenced for a moment.

"It's awful, I agree, but I really think it wasn't -" Jill tried once more.

"Thankfully, Officer Valentine, I  _do_  care about your welfare. This is a serious threat, and I won't tolerate it." He folded the letter.

"What are you going to do?" she asked. "It's typed. Like  _typewriter_ -typed."

"I know all of you  _idiots_ -" he looked pointedly at his rag-tag team. "Have covered this in your prints, but I'll see if forensics can't pick something up."

"You don't have to do that, sir," she said. "Really."

"I do, actually. And if I were you, I'd invest in a new set of locks. Immediately." He paused as he stuffed the letter in the breast pocket of his uniform. "Now, all of you, get to work."

* * *

_**2007.** _

She stared at the spigot.

It was shaped like a swan, its neck a smooth golden curve, warm water bubbling from its open beak. She watched it splash into the intricate garden tub, pouring over her feet and surging around her buttocks and thighs like a deluge. As the water rose, tepid and pleasant, so too did the fragrance of jasmine - his favorite bath crystals swirling and dissolving, the sedative scent carrying up on winding spirals of steam.

She pressed her back to the cool sloping side, reclining, listening to the way her wrist cuffs clanged and chimed against the porcelain tub. He'd restrained her there, looping her chain through a great stainless steel arch, soldered to the floor.

This was the way he bathed her.

Strange, fleeting thoughts passed through her mind, drifting like clouds. Odd remembrances, her brain reaching, trying to remind itself of the last time she had washed her own body…or brushed her own hair, now such a lustrous silvery white…or wiped herself after emptying her bladder. She couldn't remember the last time she had done any of those things on her own; she only knew that it had been nearly a year.

Would she know how to lift a fork to her mouth with the kind of sensual ease as he had when he fed her from his hand? Would she be able to collect her hair into a smooth, high ponytail as effortlessly as he did? Would she dress herself as gently as he dressed her in the early, grey mornings?

_If he left one day, set off on some fatal mission…if he died, and left her, would she be able to do anything for herself? Or would she languish and starve, chained to a beautiful bathtub in his apartment in -_

The thought stopped.

If he died…nothing would matter.

She would be dead too.

The door opened. She sat up, swallowing, her eyes darting to the mirror.

He came to the side of the tub, rolling up his sleeves. He knelt and smiled at her softly, dipping his fingers into the water.

"Is it warm enough for you?" he asked, his voice hushed, as if he was afraid to break the serenity.

She nodded, her wrists flexing in their bondage.

He took her hands in his own, turning them, stroking her palms, looking at the skin under the cuffs. He would apply lotion to her arms, she knew, to prevent calusing. He did so every night.

_Let me see your breasts._

She pressed her shoulders back for him, presenting her chest for his routine inspection. He studied her, lifting one breast and then the other.

_You're very swollen and hard. Such lovely veins though, and your nipples are growing so thick - have you seen them?_

She shook her head - she hadn't bothered to look at herself in over a month. She worried at the inside of her cheek when he squeezed her breasts, kneaded them in his palms. It was uncomfortable and foreign; she could barely stand them being touched anymore. He finished his exam by stroking her painful, puffy nipples.

_I felt them ache all day. Perhaps we should pump more frequently…once every two hours. I think we're going to induce your milk very soon._

He reached into the water, up to his elbow, his tanned forearm disappearing in the ripples and steam. He ran his fingers over her calf, her ankle.

_We'll shave tomorrow evening._

She nodded again, letting her cheek rest on the curved edge of the tub.

_How about here?_

His hand trailed up the inside of her leg…to her secret cleft. Instinctively, she opened her thighs for him.

_You were very compliant today. I didn't feel you become angry…not at all. We deserve a reward, don't you agree?_

She closed her eyes and her hips rolled against the barest touch of his fingers.

_Would you like me to shave here? Your soft little girl place? And then lick you clean?_

She sighed, and the water rose over her buoyant breasts.

He was silent for a minute, perhaps two, his fingers still languidly exploring her beneath the surface, in the jasmine heat.

"Look at me," he whispered aloud.

She opened her eyes.

She saw his face, her gaze drifting calmly over his alien beauty.

"Do you see me? Do you look at me?" he asked, his voice hesitant, nearly weak.

"Yes," she answered. "But it's too late, isn't it?"

* * *

_Dear Heart -_

_I'm writing to you because I am very lonely. I am desperate and afraid. My life spirals out of control… and yet, all I am capable of thinking about is you._

_I ruminate endlessly on your body and your sound and your smell. I touch myself, and I feel your hands on me. I speak, and I hear your voice instead of my own. I have spent a thousand dollars on women's magazines - only to tear open the perfume samples within, desperate to pinpoint the exact nature of your unidentifiable, invasive, addictive scent._

_I have tried, unsuccessfully, to exorcise myself of your persistent demon. I have attempted, many times, to cut you from my breast, to bleed you out. I have ruined and destroyed other women, too innumerable to count, in an effort to ruin and destroy you._

_But you continue to exist. Oblivious and cruel._

_There are days when I think of killing you. I imagine slicing you open, from cunt to throat, and crawling inside. I would live fully, I believe. I would wear you and I would be complete._

_Other days, I think of killing myself. It would be simple. I would be doing the world such a favor. But then… I am terrified of you having to go on without me._

_Most days, I think of killing us both._

_I fear I will lose control, and do just that._

_Do you think we'll escape each other in death?_

_We could avoid all this suffering, if you would only see me. Just look at me._

_If you looked at me, truly saw me, even once… I think I could right myself, like a ship that's come out of a storm._

_Will you look at me?_

_Do not be a tyrant. Look at me. Please._

_In Perpetuity,_

_your slave_

* * *

  
  



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